152 
PARK AND CEMETERY. 
Negotiations in progress seem to favor the purchase of a 
tract of land south of Boston, between Hyde Park, Dedham 
and Norwood, for the establishment of a Protestant cemetery. 
The tract will contain some 500 acres, and will be laid out under 
the direction of prominent landscape architects. 
* « » 
The people of Babylon, Long Island, N. Y., are becoming 
reconciled, says a press dispatch, to the establishment of a great 
cemetery in the northern part of their town in the Deer Park 
region among the pine lands. Eight cemetery associations of 
the city of New York have purchased 200 acres each and are to 
establish a great burial ground of 1,600 acres. They are to pay 
the town authorities 50 cents for each burial permit, which it is 
realized will go far toward paying for the care of the town’s 
highwavs. 
if, ^ 
W. D. Dane, comptroller of the Forest Park Cemetery, 
Troy, N. Y., is to represent the American interests of the 
American and Cuban syndicate in Cuba, vihere he will meet 
Cuban capitalists and arrange for the inception of modern 
cemeteries on the island of Cuba. Jose Eugenia Marx, a 
wealthy tobacco grower of Havana, represents the Cubans in 
the matter. The company proposes to locate cemeteries in 
different parts of the island. The capital stock of the company 
will be |2, 000, 000, of which sum half is provided by Americans. 
» » * 
The Woodlawn Cemetery Association, Winona, Minn., 
were successful in the suit to secure the $20,000 legacy from the 
estate of the late George Plummer Smith of Philadelphia. 
The time his passed in which the contestants are legally entitled 
to an appeal in the will case. Of the $20,000 about half is cash 
and the other half Winona real estate. The Pennsylvania 
hospital, the residuary legatee, made the contention about the 
will, claiming that the cash legacy of $10,000 provided for in 
the codicil of the will nullified the previous bequest of the 
land. 
* * * 
The Nyack Rural Cemetery Association was organized at 
Nyack, N. Y., on Sept. 6. It is the intention to build a liquid 
air crematory under the direction of Dr. S. H. Emmons, who 
owns the p.itents covering the process by which it will perform 
its work. The front of the retort, or furnace, is to be of glass, 
through which the process going on within can be observed- 
By the use of liquid air it is said that within twenty minutes the 
entire body, including even the teeth, will be entirely con. 
sumed. The ashes can be removed within five minutes after the 
work of the retort is finished. 
* * * 
Yeadon, Pa., is undergoing a curious cemetery oppres ion, 
due to the interested vacillations of its Borough Councils. It is 
already blessed with all or portions of four cemeteries, and now 
it is proposed to add ninety-seven acr&s to the already immenie 
territory now held by the dead who seem to be pushing the 
living to the wall. Meanwhile the councilmen are playing for 
boodle from a trolley co mpany for right of way. In connection 
with the controversy an incensed taxpayer says: “Go it, gentle- 
men, but remember what old ‘Abe’ said about being able to fool 
some of the people all the time and all of the people some of 
the time, but not all the people all the time.” 
Mrs. Clarence Mackay, to whom was presented by her 
father-in-law, Mr. John W. Mackay, the beautiful estate of 
Harbor Hills, near Roslyn, Long Island, has had a cemetery 
question on her hands which she has just solved. When the 
estate was purchased it was necessary to include the purchase of 
a negro cemetery adjoining the property, a proceeding which 
afterward caused tribulation to the colored brethren who found 
themselves unable to secure a place where to remove their dead 
and continue burial proceedings. Mrs. Mackay, finding the 
cemetery on her hands filling no useful purpose until the bodies 
could be removed, volunteered to secure a burial plot, which 
she did in Greenlawn Cemetery, Pine Lawn. All is now 
harmonious. 
* * » 
A curious complication has arisen in relation to the old 
established Presbyterian Cemetery on Chatham street. North 
Plainfield, N. J. Owing to very small business of late years it 
is unable to pay its fixed charges, and a bill for taxes,amounting 
to $210 has laid it open to sale. Senator Charles Reed, the 
borough council, to whom the case was referred, has decided 
the cemetery must be sold like any other pioperty. If it is 
sold the purchaser, of course, would have the right to remove 
the bodies. The lot holders are protesting against such pro- 
( edure, as having liquidated all calls upon them, they do not 
believe their property liable. This is a question that should be 
settled once for all, so that lot holders may know to what exten^ 
their lots are safe against such conditions. Since writing the 
problem has been solved. 
* * * 
Frank G. Carpenter, in a letter to the Pittsburg Dispatch 
about the graveyards of Porto Rico, writes as follows about the 
San Juan Cemetery: “When I entered the San Juan Cemetery 
I noticed that the open graves were singularly narrow and I 
wondered how a good-sized coffin could be squeezed into them. 
While I waited I saw four men bringing a box. They laid it 
down beside one of the open graves and then took out some- 
thing wrapped in a long sheet and dropped it into the grave. 
They threw in quicklime and then filled the grave with clods. 
The coffin was taken back to the city. As I went through the 
graveyard 1 noticed the new holes which had just been dug. 
They were really carved out of bones. Here the spade in going 
down had cloven a skull, there it had broken a thigh, and on the 
other side had cut its way through ribs and arms. The walls of 
each grave, in fact, were lined with protruding bones like the 
roots sticking out of the sides of a hole dug in the woods. 
There were bones on the bottom where the dead was to rest. 
As I looked 1 realized that in this two or three a*-es had been 
buried the dead of 300 years. San Juan dates back to the 
sixteenth century, and for generations the dead have been 
moving in and out of these holes, every now and then leaving a 
bone behind. While in the cemetery I asked one of the 
sextons where the skeletons of the ousted dead were thrown. 
He pointed to a rude stone hut in one corner of the graveyard. 
The hut was fifteen feet square and twelve feet high. Its door 
was closed with a great lock, and at first I did not see how to 
enter it. By going to the back, however, and holding onto the 
rough plaster, I found that I could climb up and look in. I 
saw a mass of human bones. The pit below me was more than 
half filled with them, their ghastly lime like whiteness shining 
under the rays of the tropical sun. On one skull was a little 
hair, and several arms and thighs were decorated with what 
seemed to be petrified flesh. There was no stench; probably 
lime had been thrown upon the mass. How deep the pit is I 
do not know. It may have a subterranean outlet to the sea, as 
have the ‘Towers of Silence,’ where the skeletons, after they 
hav^e been cleaned by the vultures, are thrown by the Parsees of 
Bombay.” 
