THE MODERN CEMETERY. 
THE MODERN CEMETERY. 
in iLUSiiirEgiigiiriiii jimii imra to i«! ioteiesi be cemeteoies 
334 Dearborn Street, CHICAGO. 
Subscription $1.00 a Year in Advance. Foreign Subscription $1.15. ■ 
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VoL. IV. CHICAGO, MAY, 1894. No. 3. 
CONTENTS. 
BURIAL REFORM (Concluded) 25 
SANITARY SEPULTURE 27 
*CALVARY CEMETEltY, ST. LOUIS, MO 27 
*THE HUMBOLDT MONUMENT, BERLIN 3° 
THE VIRGINIA LAW LICENSING EMBALMERS 32 
'CEMETERY PLANTING IV 32 
CEMETERY NOTES 33 
RULES AND REGULATIONS 35 
CORRESPONDENCE 35 
EDUCATING ANTI-MONUMENT IDEAS 36 
QUESTION BOX 36 
PUBLISHER'S DEPARTMENT 36 
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE iv 
ROADS V 
'Illustrated. 
Burial Reform.* 
I wish I might next say the wise word concern- 
ing our funeral customs. They are happily much 
modified. The long argumentative sermon is hap- 
pily gone from most communities, I trust. But 
there still remains the too public invasion of pri- 
vate homes, the long delays, the exposure and ex- 
pense of the carriage procession to the cemetery, 
and the sad desecration of nature “called floral dec- 
orations.’’ The torture to the artistic sense as well 
as the waste of the delicate product of nature in- 
volved in the so-called “set pieces” of our city fu- 
nerals, is so great, that happily the abuse seems to 
be in a fair way of correcting itself. Let me out- 
line my idea of a funeral, hoping that you will take 
it as a suggestion which may recur to you in some 
Gethsemane moment of your lives. If the deceas- 
ed was an inconspicuous member of society, let the 
sacred privacy of life be not disturbed in death; let 
there be a quiet tender memorial half hour at home, 
where the family and their nearest friends will gath- 
er to listen to a few chosen selections from death- 
less writings, a breathing of sympathy and aspira- 
tion, a word of commemoration for the dead and of 
companionship with the living. Flowers? Yes, 
indeed, a few if brought by loving hands and ar- 
ranged in the simple wholesome way of the home. 
Singing? yes, if the dear familiar things are sung 
by loving and familiar voices. No, if it means the 
professional quartet hired for the occasion. Af- 
ter this memorial half hour let the friends take lov- 
ing leave and go to their homes leaving the bereav- 
ed with their dead. At another hour, sufficiently 
removed to effectually break up the temptation to 
stay and see, let the undertaker and the necessary 
friends come and take the body away. Why should 
the family in their overstrained condition expose 
themselves to the profitless ride to the cemetery, 
and prolong the added strain of the unsatisfactory 
leave taking? If the deceased is a public character, 
one, who in his life made himself a part of the com- 
munity, let him serve once more, and let the mem- 
orial service be held either before or after burial in 
the church of his choice or the hall where the com- 
munity are wont to congregate, but let the vulgarity 
of a public funeral be reduced to a minimum. 
Instead of the expensive interference with na- 
ture’s law of decomposition in the way of hard wood 
or metalic coffin in outer box, let the body be en- 
cased in an osier or pine casket, that which will 
readily relinquish to mother earth her earthly treas- 
ure. 
The next extravagance I would correct is the 
monumental burden. It is estimated that there is 
an investment of two million dollars in monuments 
in Graceland cemetery alone. Monuments are 
among the most perishable of stone structures. An 
authority says but few monuments survive even a 
century, but even then they survive the memory of 
the lives they commemorate. And their fulsome 
compliments are read as flippantly as the amusing 
epitaphs that form the staple of the funny column of 
the newspapers. 
Oliver Wendell Holmes, remembering that three 
of the graveyards of conservative Boston have been 
tumbled over during this century says: “The stones 
have been shuffled about like chestnuts. Nothing 
short of the day of Judgment will tell whose dust 
lies beneath. ’’ 
But all this only crowds us to the ultimate logic 
of our reform. The graveyards themselves are on- 
ly a menace alike to the physical and spiritual 
well-being of the community. They are a relic of 
barbaric and superstitious ages, and they will have 
to vanish eventually before the mandates^of reason, 
science and poetry. To-day we are complacent 
over our burying ground simply because we are ig- 
'Continued from April issue, 
