20 
THE MODERN CEMETERY. 
BURIAL REFORM. 
The Kansas City Ministerial Alliance, composed of 
the leading ministers of that city, have spoken in no 
uncertain language on the subject of burial reform. 
They urge greater simplicity in floral offerings and 
recommend a discontinuance of Sunday funerals. 
Dr. L. Morgan Wood, of Detroit, Mich., addressed 
the Michigan Funeral Directors’ Association last month 
on the subject of “Funeral Reform ” He referred to 
the exorbitant use of floral displays as an “immoral 
tendency.” The poor man who has no such offerings 
is laid away, he said, as we ought all to be, in a neat well- 
trimmed box. In referring to long funeral sermons he 
said: “The custom is the old-fashioned idea come 
down to us on one leg. The old-fashioned preacher 
used to go to a funeral with a red bandanna handker- 
chief filled with cayenne pepper so that he could shed 
tears at the proper moment. He thought he had to. 
No matter if the deceased was shot while robbing a 
bank, the preacher thought he had to call him a glori- 
ously good man for the sake of the feelings of the 
mourners.” The speaker took advanced ground on the 
subject of Sunday funerals and advocated a combina- 
tion on the part of those interested in the abolishing of 
them. 
'I'he Rev. Dr. J. M. Weaver, of Louisville, Ky., in 
discussing funeral reform before the Ministerial Asso- 
ciation in that city, has suggested having funeral servi- 
ces held in the evening, with a private burial the fol- 
lowing morning. There are many reasons why such an 
arrangement would be desirable, especially in the larger 
cities, and in fact evening services are already quite 
common in Brooklyn. They certainly insure a more 
private funeral which is greatly to be desired. 
Some day says a writer in the Pittsburg Dispatch, we 
will learn so much of the meaning of death, and will 
think so much of the bright and victorious and spiritual 
side of it, that we will dispense with all symbols which 
accept its lower and transient and physical significance. 
In that day we will have no more pagan tombstones. 
We will come to realize that the best memorial of a 
good man is not a stone in a graveyard, but a good 
deed, bearing perpetual interest of loving kindness, 
testifying not to death, but to life. The great ceme- 
teries are gardens of despair — not despair of immor- 
tality, but of brotherly love. They are full of monu- 
ments built with misspent money. One who drives 
through their avenues, looking thoughtfully from side 
to side, remembers the request for bread which was 
answered with a stone. So much might have been done 
to add to the light of life, to uplift and save men, to 
keep the memory of the dead blessed — and here are 
these useless piles of carved rock, which are not even 
beautiful! A scholarship in a school, a lectureship in 
a college, books for a library, a picture for a public 
gallery, an endowment for a charity, a window in a 
church — any one of these is immeasurably better than 
a cold stone. 
A Spiritualistic View of Cremation. 
Many religious bodies are looking into the subjec 
of cremation at the present time, among others the 
Spiritualists, who predict that before many years this 
will be the universally accepted mode of burial. They, 
and indeed many Christian communities, believe so fully 
in the resurrection of the spiritual body that there 
seems much inconsistency in the efforts made to pre- 
serve the earthly body as long as possible after death, 
and appreciating this they are beginning to deprecate 
the process of embalming, the use of brick graves, etc., 
and to advocate cremation. 
This subject is causing much agitation and being very 
ably discussed in England just now, but from a purely 
sanitary standpoint, and from this point of view and 
leaving all sentiment out of the question, it would seem 
to commend itself very highly. One is startled to learn 
that in the last 30 years, in spite of many administrative 
reforms, no less than 70,000 preventable deaths from 
disease have occurred in England. The clergy of the 
Established church are interesting themselves deeply in 
the need of sanitary reform in regard to old church- 
yards and other burial grounds, and at a meeting of the 
Church of England Sanitary Association held last 
month a paper was contributed by Mr. F. Scott, in 
which he dwelt on the tardiness of the English people 
to adopt any new sanitary system. He seemed to favor 
earth burial, but that the soil should be porous, and the 
body placed in actual contact with the earth; while Dr. 
W. B. Richardson, at the same meeting, suggested that 
there be a crematorium as well as a burial ground in 
connection with every large church, so there might be 
a choice in the method of burial. Something of the 
kind may come to be necessary before very long, for a 
little further on in the journal containing this account, 
we see that in digging a grave in a churchyard twelve 
skulls were exposed! The good people of the district 
have decided that they really need a cemetery or at 
least more burial room. 
Destroying Holes. 
A writer in the American Florist says: My plan to 
get rid of these pests is to mix a small quantity of ar- 
senic in a little corn meal and after making holes at in- 
tervals in the runs drop in small pellets of the meal. 
This method was completely successful. 
A time-saving clergyman at Leamsley having to at- 
tend two funerals on the same day, a fortnight since, 
kept one waiting twenty minutes for the other, says the 
London Funeral Director. The graves were thirty 
yards apart, and this obliging priest performed the cere- 
mony at a point half-way between. The result was that 
few, if any, of the mourners in either party could hear 
what was being read, and the sublime burial service of 
the Church of England was turned into a farce. 
