I 12 
THE MODERN CEMETERY. 
A South American Cemetery. 
Arrived at the gates of Asuncion’s “recoleta” 
you find women squatting on the ground outside, 
each with a few dulces, fruits and flowers to sell for 
the consolation of visitors. But trade can not be 
brisk, for there are never any visitors, except an 
occasional foreigner, the followers of funeral pro- 
cessions and on the annual recurrence of All-Soul’s 
day. Entering, you find a bare, unkempt enclos- 
ure — which strikes you as being exceedingly small 
for so old and large a city, until you remember the 
grewsome custom of piling corpse upon corpse, of 
borrowed coffins and rented graves for periods of 
from three months to three years, according to the 
means or affections of the mourners, and the semi- 
annual burning of the evicted bones. Although 
the living are so profuse in their use of flowers, 
there are few for the dead in this neglected God’s 
Acre — only the faded wreaths of the more recently 
bereaved. And there are no trees but the useful 
orange, whose fruit the natives do not hesitate to 
eat, although its abnormal lusciousness speaks of 
the decay in which the roots were nourished. 
The burial inclosure is crowded with wooden 
crosses painted black and mural tombs — some of 
the latter elaborate specimens of the Italian stucco 
workers’ art; others with some architectural merit, 
but the majority pretty good representations of 
Dutch bake ovens. On the tombs of the well-to-do 
the lack of flowers is compensated by ugly wreaths 
of black and white beads strung on wires after 
the French fashion, which gives the mourning rela- 
tives little trouble, not being perishable. They 
have but to place a bead wreath upon the grave of 
the dear departed and wash their hands of the dec- 
orative business for a whole year — until both fashion 
and religion demand their attention to the spot on 
All Soul’s day. The simple burial places of the 
poor show the most care — perhaps because in every 
case the poor cadaver beneath is only a temporary 
tenant to be presently turned out into the general 
pile of its former friends and neighbors. Nearly 
all the black, wooden crosses have placed in front 
of them two common tin lanterns, each surmounted 
by a little tin cross, with candles burning inside, and 
scraps of white linen beautifully embroidered at the 
ends or finished with a deep fall of nanduti lace are 
draped around the arms of the cross. 
An old church connected with the recoleta is at 
one side of it, and on the other, strange to say, is 
an Italian beer garden, where the sorrows of the 
stricken may be literally “drowned.” In it are fruit 
and flower stands, besides the usual booths devoted 
to beer, and the contrast between this cheerful and 
well-patronized garden of Bacchus and the adjoin- 
ing neglected and forsaken “Field of Saints” 
(Campo Santo), is something very startling. 
The richer classes decorate their family vaults 
with splendid wreaths and numerous candles, and 
stand in rows before them, murmuring prayers; but 
you can not help noticing that most of them are not 
too much engaged to watch the stranger’s every 
movement with insatiable curiosity. Here and 
there one sees a poor woman kneeling upon some 
newly-made grave, her face literally bowed to the 
dust, which in true Biblical fashion, she has thrown 
over herself, uttering meanwhile the most heart- 
rending shrieks and sobs, which seem likely to 
end in a fit. Naturally your sympathies are 
aroused and you yearn to go and mingle your tears 
with hers; when you are amazed to see her sudden- 
ly brace up, cease her cries, shake the dirt from her 
head, leisurely pick out another grave and fall upon 
it in the same manner, with her face in the dust, 
beginning anew the sobs and tears more violently 
than before; and then you understand that she is a 
professional mourner, hired to weep by the hour at 
a stated sum, and paid so much per sob. There 
are real mourners, too, whose grief is undoubtedly 
genuine, in whose sad eyes orte reads that death is 
always a tragedy, as grim and inscrutable in palace 
as in hovel. 
Let fancy picture to you the extraordinary 
scene. The crowds of barefooted, black-gowned 
women, the mumbling priests and hustling sight- 
seers, the wild, pathetic music, mingled with the 
shrieks of hired mourners, the fragrant heaps of 
flowers, the odd shapes of the monuments, the 
quaint old church (in which all this time a corpse 
was lying), palms and bananas peering over the 
wall, blue hills in the distance, a wide vista of roll- 
ing, wooded, peaceful landscape, dotted with the 
red-tiled roofs of cottage homes and the yellow 
glow of fruit-laden orange groves — all bathed in 
golden sunshine, permeated by human affections, 
sorrow and helplessness, though rudely expressed, 
and dominated by the stern, unchangeable fact that 
the common tragedy is as inscrutable as universal, 
and that whatever method one may take to assuage 
his personal sorrow and show his faithful love for 
the departed the mystery remains as unsolved to- 
day as when the first man died . — Fannie B. Ward, 
in Chicago Tribune. 
An ordinance of the city of Austin, Tex., mak- 
ing it a penal offense to bury the dead within the 
limits of the city, was declared void recently by a 
jury in the case of the Austin City Cemetery Asso- 
ciation vs. City of Austin. On the strength of this 
decision the present city cemetery will be extended 
within the city limits taking in an additional tract 
of ten acres. 
