Dead, and yet living! How can that be?--you ask. Ah, my friends! If
you seek to be rid of your dead relations for a certainty, you
should have their bodies cremated. Otherwise there is no knowing
what may happen! Cremation is the best way--the only way. It is
clean, and SAFE. Why should there be any prejudice against it?
Surely it is better to give the remains of what we loved (or
pretended to love) to cleansing fire and pure air than to lay them
in a cold vault of stone, or down, down in the wet and clinging
earth. For loathly things are hidden deep in the mold--things, foul
and all unnameable--long worms--slimy creatures with blind eyes and
useless wings--abortions and deformities of the insect tribe born of
poisonous vapor--creatures the very sight of which would drive you,
oh, delicate woman, into a fit of hysteria, and would provoke even
you, oh, strong man, to a shudder of repulsion! But there is a worse
thing than these merely physical horrors which come of so-called
Christian burial--that is, the terrible UNCERTAINTY. What, if after
we have lowered the narrow strong box containing our dear deceased
relation into its vault or hollow in the ground--what, if after we
have worn a seemly garb of woe, and tortured our faces into the
fitting expression of gentle and patient melancholy--what, I say, if
after all the reasonable precautions taken to insure safety, they
should actually prove insufficient? What--if the prison to which we
have consigned the deeply regretted one should not have such close
doors as we fondly imagined? What, if the stout coffin should be
wrenched apart by fierce and frenzied fingers--what, if our late
dear friend should NOT be dead, but should, like Lazarus of old,
come forth to challenge our affection anew? Should we not grieve
sorely that we had failed to avail ourselves of the secure and
classical method of cremation? Especially if we had benefited by
worldly goods or money left to us by the so deservedly lamented! For