14 
PARK AND CEMETER Y. 
REFINED FORM OF SARCOPHAGUS MONUMENT. 
planning — by that 1 mean planning of vil- 
lages, planning of roadways, planning of 
trails — I found that I could not determine 
whether a road should go in one place or 
another unless I knew whether the depart- 
ment wished to administer those parks 
upon a revenue producing basis, or 
whether they wished to administer them as 
a free-for-all park. There have never 
been given any specific instructions as to 
whether the parks should be administered 
on a revenue producing basis or not. If 
we are going to plan any work to produce 
revenue ; if we are going to pledge any- 
thing for transportation concessions along 
those roads, those roads must be planned 
with that point in view, as well as its 
other requirements. That has resulted in 
the secretary requesting that I develop a 
scheme for the economic development of 
the park system. I have gone so far in 
this that we now know what we can ex- 
pect. We. can present to Congress now, or 
to the committee, an outline of just what 
we will do; just how far we can go; just 
what revenue we may expect this year, 
next year and so on for twenty years, pro- 
viding they will defray our expenses. In 
discussing the difficulties with the people 
out West I have received absolutely no 
sympathy. The usual response to mv re- 
marks that we are in need of assistance is 
the inquiry : “In what department are the 
national parks?” I tell them they are in 
the Department of the Interior. They say : 
“Oh, well, that is all right. Secretary Lane 
will fix it.” And I believe he will. 
Probably more artistic sins have been 
committed against the sarcophagus type 
of cemetery monument by the endless 
variations of the die with two ugly 
rock-faced bases and heavy, ill-propor- 
tioned, overhanging cap than any other 
stock cemetery form. The design shown 
here illustrates the possibilities of this 
type of memorial when executed in good 
proportions and architecturally correct 
construction. This is a simple, massive 
sarcophagus that appeals solely by rea- 
son of its just proportions, well-chosen 
decorations, and the graceful lines. This 
handsome design is the work of John F. 
Stanley, of Buffalo, N. Y., who has been 
successful to a remarkable degree in pro- 
ducing forms of small monuments that 
combine good art and architecture with 
simple, practical construction. 
ORIGINAL DESIGN I!V JOHN F. STANLEY. NEW YORK 
HISTORY AND PRACTICE OF CREMATION 
Address before the New England Cemetery Association by Edgar 
King, Superintendent of Springfield Cemetery, Springfield, Mass. 
Cremate — what is it? Webster defines it 
“to burn, to reduce to ashes either directly 
or in oven or retort.” To incinerate is de- 
fined “to burn, to reduce to ashes.” These 
definitions by our greatest authority on 
words, to my mind, do not completely 
cover the field with respect to what we en- 
counter when cremation is applied to the 
human body. I respectfully submit that the 
word “distil” might not inappropriately 
have been added; all persons familiar with 
the process will admit that cremation, in 
the sense in which we are interested, 
means very largely distillation, 78 per cent 
of the human body being composed of 
water. 
The first scientific cremation in the 
United States took place thirty-eight years 
ago at Washington, Pa. The pioneer cre- 
mator was Dr. F. Julius LeMoyne and the 
subject was the body of Baron De Palm, 
but the precedent had been set eighty- 
three years previously by the son of Henry 
Laurens., South Carolina’s revolutionary 
patriot, who consigned his father’s body 
to a funeral pyre. 
The ghastly experience of seeing his in- 
fant child come to life just before prepara- 
tions had been made to bury it in the earth 
is said to have been responsible for Lau- 
rens’ demand to be cremated, and to insure 
his wishes in that respect being complied 
with, a legacy of $300,000, which he willed 
to his son, was conditioned upon the ful- 
fillment of his desires. A failure on the 
part of the son to cause his remains to be 
cremated carried the penalty of forfeiture 
of the legacy. 
Europe has nearly one hundred crema- 
toriums. Germany disposed of 8,858 bod- 
ies by cremation in 1912 and the practice 
is being followed by this nation on the bat- 
tlefields in Belgium of cremating all sol 
diers who are killed in action. Italy is rec- 
ognized as being the country to resurrect 
the ancient practice. I have been unable 
to obtain figures to substantiate the claim 
that she leads the world in the percentage 
of cremation, nevertheless we may be as- 
sured the claim is honestly based. In the 
city of St. Gall, Switzerland, it is reported 
that during the year 1912, of the 535 per- 
sons who died there, 201 were cremated. 
England is strongly leaning to this method 
of the disposal of the dead, and the au- 
thorities of Westminster Abbey, the re- 
pository of Britain’s heroes, have recently 
.prohibited the burial of more bodies ; they 
must be cremated. At Pierre les Chaise, 
Paris, where the city authorities cremate 
all cases that fall to them for disposition, 
the number is so great that the retorts, of 
which there are several, are employed in 
constant service for the twenty-four hours 
of the day during the entire year. 
Sir Henry Thompson introduced crema- 
tion into Great Britain soon after the clos- 
ing of the American Civil War. Using a 
reverberating furnace, he reduced a body 
weighing 144 pounds to 4 pounds of lime 
dust within 50 minutes, and it was 
Thompson’s success which caused Dr. Le 
Moyne to install an improved incinerator 
in a small one-story brick structure on a 
hill overlooking the city of Washington, 
Pa., and where he was himself, three years 
later, cremated in his own institution. 
Fifty-eight crematories have been erect- 
