THE MODERN CEMETERY. 
130 
':^10orre5ponelence.l^ 
A Surveyor’s Review of the “Convention Proceedings.” 
Editor Modern Cemetery. 
Having before me the “Proceedings of the 
Seventh Annual Convention of Association of Ameri- 
can Cemetery Superintendents,” I have carefully 
gone over the several discussions with the purpose 
of garnering the opinions of leading minds re- 
specting points concerning the planning or lay outs 
of new grounds. All as with one accord concur 
in endorsing the “Lawn Plan” and condemning what 
they term the “Old Plan.” I have tried to determine 
by their debate just what is meant by the new plan 
or lawn plan and just what belongs to the old plan, 
as to the latter I am confident they are not refer- 
ing to church burial grounds or town plats for bur- 
ial purposes as was every where in use during the 
last century. I have been laying out cemeteries 
since 1852: at that date our work was called the 
park plan, sometimes the new plan and quite fre- 
quently the association plan. I would like to say 
that our methods have been moderately improved 
but not in any essential sense radically changed, so 
far as designing or laying out are concerned. Wc 
had drives or avenues then, also lawns, and alleys 
with paths to reach every family lot or single grave, 
and I may say the same essential features are still 
recognized among the best maintained and improved 
grounds. It would be quite just to say that the 
management has drifted away from the original idea 
of a park with memorial monuments and low grave 
marks, large unincumbered vistas with occasional 
groups of planting, here and there a shady resting 
place with rustic seats for the invalid or weary 
pedestrian. They have permitted the useless en- 
closure to take a multitude of cumbersome forms. 
The iron railing, posts with chains, curb stones, 
hedge rows and all such trappings, even the massive 
corner posts are all encroachments, that should have 
been kept out of the way. 
The park plan, association plan, lawn plan and 
modern plan are essentially the same but the meth- 
ods of care should be radically reformed and the 
American Association of Cemetery Superintendents 
have taken hold of the work. They are seeming 
sensible respecting the difficulty they have to treat, 
but I am sure they will succeed in large measure. 
The people revolt at arbitrary ruling, but they 
respect change and indeed covet it. A sacrifice that 
is voluntary will be counted a virtue and pleas- 
ure, but arbitrary destruction will weigh down like 
vandalism. 
I am unwilling to fully concur with the superin- 
tendents who would unhesitatingly abandon all 
graveled walks, because of the expense of keeping 
in order. Were we to do so the rural cemetery 
will lose one element which enables the designer to 
bring out much of the natural beauty that inheres 
to the ground. Without this means of bringing out 
the natural undulation, the plan will reduce itself to 
a mere checker board. Mr. Pres. Salway says, 
“the walk should follow the contour of the hill,” in 
that he is strictly right, a similar principle will con- 
trol on the plateaus, slight wrinkles or undulations 
of surface are sufficient to control or very much 
modify the range taken for a walk. When this 
graceful sweep has been fully developed and defined 
so that the common mind observes the respect paid 
to it by the artist, he involuntarily exclaims how 
beautiful ! 
I am not without an experience in the matter of 
having roads washed out by storms. I add concur- 
ence in the opinion that walks which cannot be pro- 
tected against mutilation during storms had better 
be filled flush with adjacent lawn and sodded over. 
All family plats and I will add (single grave in- 
terments) should be accessible by carriage drive or 
public opening, this principle need not and should 
not unduly increase the amount of graveled walks. 
Walk spaces may be provided and remain as parts 
of the lawn, what I claim is that some conspicuous 
walks so located as to give character and obvious 
purpose should not be under disguise but brought 
out in full view so that the way faring man, though 
a fool, may find and if he wills to do so, can follow 
it. In some future article I may comment more on 
other characteristics of the cemetery walk. 
B. F. Hatiieway. 
Burial by Contract. 
In every great city the poor live by the worldly 
vanities of the rich. In Paris, they die in the same 
way. It is the manufacture of innumerable super- 
fluities which makes up the bulk of the industry of 
the working classes. The French capital has de- 
veloped an ingenious system by which the poor are 
furnished with a free burial at the expense of the 
“pride, pomp, and circumstance” which Dives con- 
siders his due on the road to the tomb. 
One of the largest best-managed and most profit- 
able industries in Paris is that of the Pompes Fune- 
bres, the gigantic monopoly which alone has the 
privilege of transporting the dead through the streets 
of Paris in funeral style. It possesses undertaker’s 
material to the value of over 4,000,000 of francs, 
does some 6,000,000 a year of business, and turns 
over nearly 2,500,000 of this as clear profit to its 
accredited owners, the church establishment of the 
(.j^y, after gratuitously and decently burying some 
