THE MODERN CEMETERYo 
135 
Lincoln’s Address at the Dedication of the National 
Cemetery at Gettysburg, Pa. 
Four score and seven years ago, our fathers 
brought forth on this continent, a new nation, con- 
ceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition 
that all men are created equal. 
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, test- 
ing whether that nation or any nation so conceived 
and so dedicated can long endure. We are met on 
a great battle field of that war. We have come to 
dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place 
for those, who here gave their lives, that that na- 
tion might live. It is altogether fitting and prop- 
er that we should do this. But in a larger sense, 
we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we 
can not hallow this ground. 
The brave men living and dead, who strug- 
gled here have consecrated it, far above our 
poor power to add or detract. The world will 
little note, nor long remember what we say here, but 
it can never forget, what they did here. It is for 
us the living rather to be dedicated here to the un- 
finished work which those who fought here have so 
nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here ded- 
icated to the great task remaining, before us, that 
from these honored dead, we take increased devo- 
tion, to that cause for which they gave the last full 
measure of devotion, that we here highly resolve 
that these dead shall not have died in vain, that 
this nation under God, shall have a new birth of 
freedom, and that government of the people, by the 
people, for the people shall not perish from the 
earth. Abraham Lincoln. 
November 19th., 1863. 
A Tax on Graves. 
The members of the Paris Municipal Council have 
little difficulty in meeting any deficit in their bud- 
get. They are threatened with one now, and con- 
sequently have resolved to put a fresh tax on 
funerals. 
Strictly speaking, of course, this will take the 
form of enhanced fees to be paid by the public, as 
there are no private undertakers in the French capi- 
.tal. According to the tariff which has been in vogue 
during the present regime the price of a freehold 
grave, two square yards in size, is £ 14, but there is 
a progressive scale, so that a third yard costs ^40 
extra, and a fourth the same amount again, while a 
fifth and a sixth are charged £60 each, and every 
yard above a sixth costs no less than ;^8o. The 
municipality proposes to increase the price of the 
first two yards to £ 20, and to remodel the scale of 
charges in other ways, so that it is estimated there 
will be an increased revenue of ^21,520 per annum. 
— London Tid Bits. 
A Club that Attended Funerals. 
The funeral Club of Paris was a ghastly or- 
ganization. Its object was to attend in a body all 
public funerals, and private ones where it was al- 
lowed. Its meetings were always held in cemeter- 
ies, and members invariably dressed in sombre black 
with crape sashes on their hats. The only music 
they had was a hand organ, and this played noth- 
ing but the dead march in “Saul.” All kinds of 
gayeties, theatres, dances and parties the members 
were strictly forbidden to participate in at any time; 
indeed it is difficult to imagine what on earth the men 
composing the funeral Club had to live for anyhow. 
— Boston Home Jonrnal. 
= CKenATiQN. ^ 
The annual report of the Philadelphia Cremation 
Society states that 68 bodies were cremated in 1893 
and 254 since 1881. 
* * * * 
Oakwoods cemetery, Troy, N. Y., Graceland at 
Chicago, Forest Lawn at Buffalo, Cypress Lawn at 
San Francisco, Rosedale at Los Angeles have cre- 
matoriums in successful operation. In New York, 
Boston, Detroit and other cities, the crematoriums 
are situated within a short distance of prominent 
cemeteries. 
* * * 
It has remained for a profound German scient- 
ist to suggest that cremation should become popu- 
lar because it would put an end to the supersti- 
tious belief in graveyard ghosts. 
* * * • 
At the recent tuberculosis congress at Paris, it 
was declared that bacilli existing in the bodies of 
persons who die of consumption are brought to the 
surface of the ground by earthworms, and two Lyons 
physicians demonstrated by the result of actual ex- 
periment that the disease may be propagated in this 
way. Compulsory cremation was therefore urged 
as one means of guarding against the spread of 
this dreaded scourge. 
General Crook’s monument in Arlington ceme- 
tery, Washington, is a massive, oblong block of 
Quincy granite resting upon a low base of the same 
material. The top of the stone is rock-faced, and 
three of the sides bear bronze tablets. One gives 
the names of the Indian campaigns, another the bat- 
tles of the civil war in which General Crook was en- 
gaged, and the third depicts the surrender of Gero- 
nimo in the Sierra Madre in 1883. General Crook 
and his assistants, with the noted Indian chief and 
several of his tribe, are grouped amid rustic sur- 
roundings. The portraiture in the miniature figures 
is said to be very good. 
