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Show IS !; CREMATION. 1 i; few York lias been experimenting I'L jj with cremation. It doas not seem to be isi: jl popular. This is not strange, as death 1 j never has been popular and probably ct j never will be. Death is the great thing i in this world, and let poets describe it as 1 1 ' . they may it still remains a terrible thing. IQ) Shelley may say that "death is the veil f- which the living call life ; we sleep and h ; it is lifted," yet Job and the Preacher lb a I have put it as it is, and man is but dust s - and to dust he must return. - Death is k jj but dissolution, and after dissolution there i ? come decay and corruption. Decay and Itic j corruption come to the most beautiful kjk I i and the best loved, and the love of the ors (f m living for the departed dead cannot stay ji i I their progress. To our traditions and iaj'i! i our prejudices the burning of the bodies f'( I of the dead is a terrible thing and it is jj! I natural that one should shudder as he j""!; I sees the body .which once contained a adst'P f dear and a divine soul reduced to ashes.'' are.j Yet that body must at last become as jt. M the dust of the earth, and the decay and ?ite ii' corruption which render it into dust are leals 'i ' liable to be a source of disease and per.;;; death to the living. The ; living must jj take precedence of the dead, and to rratlj preserve the living the dead I theN V must be so disposed of that l -1 as jjossible. The cremation of the dead reduces this danger to the minimum. When people have died of contagious or infectious diseases, the cremation of their bodies would kill all disease germs ; and it is a pretty well established fact that earth worms become infected with these germs and often bring these germs to the surface of the earth, thereby spreading a disease anew: ' The investigations of Pasteur Pas-teur seem to confirm this fact. Such things could not possibly happen where bodies are cremated." The disposal of the dead is not much of a problem in small towns and sparsely settled countries, but in the great centers of population like New York, London, Paris and other large cities, it is one of the greatest problems to be solved. There has never been a satisfactory solution of it and it is doubtful whether there ever will be. - The disposal of the dead is a most important sanitary question, and must from this point of view arrest the attention of every person at all solicitous for the health and welfare of the living. Cremation is not likely to ever come into such favor as will make it a solution for the question of the disposal of the dead ; if it could become be-come universal the problem would be solved. The problem would also be solved if the dead could all be buried at sea, but this could not be with inland towns.' Some of the tribes of the far East make a very philosophical disposal of their dead by burying them in their towers of silence. Edward O'Donovan describes these towers in his "The Merv Oasis." Science favors cremation as a solution for the problem of the disposal of the dead, but tradition and the teachings teach-ings of centuries declare in favor of the burial of the dead in mother earth. |