THE MODERN CEMETERY. 
The Congressional Cemetery at Washington. 
The Congressional cemetery lies about a mile south- 
east of the capitol at Washington, on the bank of the 
Potomac river. Its surroundings are peaceful, for the 
city has grown in just the opposite direction and left it 
standing, as it did a hundred years ago, amid the peace- 
ful tranquility of rural surroundings. Here lies all that 
is mortal of two vice presidents of the bmited States, a 
British envoy, a Prussian minister, senators and repre- 
sentatives in Congress, admirals and major generals, 
associate justices of the supreme court of the United 
States, an Indian chief of renown, and scattered among 
and about them, the remains of hundreds of men and 
women whose names have never graced the printed 
page. It is an odd place. Not quaint— the “modern 
improvements,” which permeate it so thoroughly, have 
taken from it the quality of quaintness. But new and 
old, fresh and quaint, famous and commonplace make 
a strange combination on each side of its narrow paths 
and little-frequented drives. Its very name is an oddity, 
for, from its inception, it has never been strictly a con- 
gressional cemetery. It was originally a private enter- 
prise and when Congress determined to favor it with its 
patronage when distinguished men were to be buried at 
the public’s expense, the owners named it the Con- 
gressional cemetery on much the same principle on 
wTlch the London haberdasher writes “Purveyor to the 
Prince of Wales” at the head of his business announce- 
ment. The circumstances which moved Congress to 
select an official burial place was the necessity (due to 
the excessive cost of transportation at that time) of 
burying at the capital members of Congress who died 
there in the discharge of their public duties. Accord- 
ing to the original plan, monuments of a modest char- 
acter were erected over the remains of all the senators 
and representatives who were buried there; but this was 
soon modified by the addition of a provision under 
which cenotaphs of a similar design and character were 
to be erected in memory of members of Congress who 
might be buried elsewhere. As the government reserva- 
tion in the original cemetery was not well defined, the 
graves of the distinguished dead were very irregularly 
arranged, and, but for the peculiar style of the monu- 
ment which marks each one of them, it would be diffi- 
cult to distinguish them at a distance from the last rest- 
ing places, ancient and modern, which lie between and 
about them. The Congressional mile-stone on the road 
to eternity rested on a brick foundation. Its base was 
a square block of sandstone on which rested another 
square block of the same stone somewhat smaller in 
size. On these rested a cube or “die” on whose pan- 
eled side was inscribed the name of the deceased to- 
gether with his official title, his age and the date of his 
death. They stand side by side in long rows in the 
Congressional cemetery as bare and as meaningless as 
the little foot7Stones that mark the graves of the soldier 
dead at Arlington; more meaningless, in fact, for the 
foot-stones mark a grave while most of the blocks of 
stone in the Congressional cemetery mark nothing but 
a memory. The custom of erecting cenotaphs was 
abandoned in 1876 when the house of representatives 
during the discussion of an appropriation for seventeen 
cenotaphs, determined that it was time to discontinue 
the erection of useless monuments. An act was passed 
at that time providing that where an actual interment of 
a member of the house of representatives or of the sen- 
ate took place in the Congressional cemetery, the ser- 
geant-at-arms of the legislative body of which he was a 
membqr should cause a monument of granite with suit- 
able inscriptions, to be erected over the grave. The 
main drive of the cemetery is called Congress avenue 
and along one side of it are long rows of congressional 
monuments. 
Tuberous=Rooted Begonias. 
Mr. John G. Barker, superintendent of Forest Hills 
cemetery, Boston, read an interesting paper on the sub- 
ject of Tuberous-Rooted Begonias before the Massa- 
chusetts Horticultural Society last month. After tracing 
the history of the plant from its earliest introduction in 
England from Bolivia and Peru and quoting the opinions 
of many eminent floriculturists on its adaptability to 
ojien air culture, Mr. Barker said: 
I believe there is the greatest future before it of any 
plant of recent introduction. We have been too apt to 
think it would not flourish except under glass, and 
therefore it has not been given a fair trial as a bedder. 
We have grown it moderately at Forest Hills until last 
year; then quite extensively, having planted out some 
thousands of them in different parts of the grounds, in 
large and small beds and on graves, in all cases they 
were the best beds of flowering plants in the cemetery, 
affording a remarkable variety of color — white, yellow, 
orange, rose, scarlet and crimson, in numerous shades. 
Then their comparison with other flowers shows greatly 
in their favor. The geraniums thus far have taken the 
lead as the best bedders; but how a rainstorm destroys 
geranium flowers, especially of the single varieties! but 
with the begonias it is not so; they are bright again in 
twenty-four hours, flowers and foliage standing up in 
bright array. 
At Forest Hills we must have large quantities of 
bedding plants and of the best. The introduction of the 
Crozy cannas and the tuberous begonia forms a great 
advance. It is to be hoped they will soon take the 
place of the faded coleus, and perhaps others may as 
well be spared, as they reflect no credit upon a well- 
managed place. I think there is very little character to 
the so-called “foliage bed.” One can get material at a 
dry goods store, with which to produce as good an 
effect. I do not include in this remark the sub-tropical 
beds, but those filled with so-called foliage plants. 
Flowering plants are decidedly better. What “foliage” 
