PARK AND CCMCTCRY 
369 
are therefore constant and perpetual, both here and hereafter, 
and if occasionally a few times in every life we are thereby 
stricken down by grief, and a sense of loneliness and loss al- 
most overcomes us, we should be reasonable and remember all 
the benefits we and the world derive from this same Friend, who 
will one day call in turn for us. 
Although it often seems as though lives were cut short in 
the midst of their allotted tasks, leaving them uncompleted, yet 
often the real benefit of a life comes only after it has ceased to 
exist. Then it is that the character wrought out in life is dis- 
tilled into a spiritual influence which may accompany, pervade, 
and shape a thousand lives, as could not have been done by the 
embodied soul. If a feeling of incompleteness accompanies this 
influence, a thousand minds are stimulated to carry on what one 
had begun, and so the works grows and spreads by the death of 
its originator, as Christianity itself did when its founder was 
called away before his work had scarcely begun. 
Then why should an air of gloom, of mourning, of sombre 
sadness pervade everything connected with death and the grave? 
Surely the dead are not honored in this despairing inaction. We 
honor them most by cheerfully lending a hand to complete the 
work they had begun, and to fill the void their departure had 
left in our midst. In this way we too may worship our ances- 
tors, and to a much greater profit than in caring for their tombs 
and in ministering to the supposed wants of their departed spirits. 
Other losses are not to be repaired by mourning over them, 
then why should this be any exception to our common rule of con- 
duct? There is but one answer to this question. It has be- 
come so fixed and universal a custom to do so that we should be 
considered heartless to abstain. To be strictly honest, one must 
admit, I think, that this is the case. No customs are so hard 
to change as those relating to death and burial. In these re- 
spects we are still in the barbarous stage. In these affairs, 
most pre-eminently matters of the heart, of private or individual 
concern, we act as though we took council only of public opinion 
and had no personal interest in the subject. We either affect a 
sadness and grief we do not feel, or we coarsely parade before 
the gaping crowd our crushed and bleeding heart strings. In 
other matters of the heart we maintain our privacy intact from 
our nearest and dearest friends as modesty and delicacy, and a 
due regard for our own self-respect require, but in all matters 
relating to death in the family, the conduct of funerals, and 
our mourning habits, we are bound absolutely to a series of cus- 
toms at once irrational, barbarous and oppressive. 
But, you maysay, why should we be told againof these things 
which we all know and have long deprecated? I don’t know that 
1 can give you a good reason, and probably I should apologize to 
you for bewailing before you a state of things you would all 
gladly join with me or any one else in correcting. Perhaps it is 
because I have felt that you as a class of men, charged with car- 
ing for our places of the dead, may possibly do a little to im- 
press upon the public, in an unconscious way perhaps, the feel- 
ing that death is a friend and not an enemy. 
I believe, however, you are all trying to do this. I am sure 
it is not with your approbation or advice that our cemeteries 
look so much like charnel houses. You surely do not favor be- 
decking them with broken shafts, ghastly marbles, and weeping 
willows. On the other hand, I am sure you are doing all you can 
to banish these from our “Cities of the Dead,” as they are now 
very properly called, and to bring in the place of these emblems 
of sorrow the brightest of flowers and the most cheerful foliage; 
the most beautiful and in spiring trees and the most restful and 
inviting landscapes; and in place of iron fences and stone vaults 
give us glassy waters and shady walks. Give nature a chance 
to cheer and sooth the disconsolate and wounded hearts which 
venture here to be again near the remains of their loved ones in- 
stead of wounding and crushing them anew _^with skulls 
and cross-bones, lifeless marbles and ghastly sepulchres. 
What I wish to see, therefore, in all matters pertaining to 
the final departure of the visible forms of our friends from this 
world is a general recognition of the following facts: 
1. That alt people should try to add to our common happi- 
ness, improvement and good cheer, feeling sure that the more 
we succeed in bringing heavenly happiness into this world the 
more likely we are to find a happy heaven in the next. 
2. That death is the great friend and benefactor of the race. 
3. That it comes only in accordance with the working out 
of wise and beneficent laws, and never as a special judgment, 
or by accident or through blind caprice. 
4. That it shoukd be received and respected as a friend and 
not reviled and hated as the insidious skulking foe of all man- 
kind. 
5. That all matters connected with death and burial should 
receive a more private, and therefore a more natural and cheer- 
ful treatment. 
6. That the minds of those who mourn should be turned to 
the future rather than to the past, since looking backward, ex- 
cept to range a course forward, is always profitless. 
7. That the lifeless bodies once inhabited by our friend 
should be reduced to their earthly elements in the most rapid 
and harmless manner possible. 
8. That if these material remains are preserved in the 
bosom of Mother Earth, it be in spots unobtrusively marked in 
beautiful parks, where earth and sky, flower and foliage, lawn 
and lake, birds and butterflies shall each and all bring healing 
and joy to the crushed and bleeding hearts which will resort 
thither as a thirsty traveler to rippling waters. 
Luminous Plants. 
Several varieties of the vegetable kingdom are 
luminous in a greater or less degree. One of the 
fungi, which is not at all uncommon on the walls of 
damp, dark mines, caverns, etc. , occasionally emits 
sufficient light to admit of the reading of ordinary 
print by it. The emission of light from a common 
potato when in a state of decomposition is some- 
times very striking. Several of the Italian plants and 
grasses are also luminous, and it is said that in 1845 
the mountains near Syree were nightly illuminated 
by their means. The root stock of a plant from the 
Ooraghum jungle, supposed to be an orchid, pos- 
sesses the peculiar property of becoming luminous 
when wetted, while when dry it is quite lusterless. 
The hairy red poppy, the nasturtium and the double 
marigold are also luminous to a certain degree. — 
Boston Traveler. 
Naworth Castle, England, the border seat of the 
Earl of Carlisle, has just lost one of its historic pos- 
sessions in the shape of a venerable oak tree, which 
fell, unable to withstand its immense top growth. 
The tree stood at the entrance gate of the castle, 
and was the one upon which “Belted Will” Howard, 
in the beginning of the seventeenth century used to 
execute the marauding borderers with whom he had 
to deal as Warden of the Marches and “Civilizer of 
the Borders.’’ 
