HPB-SB-4-21: Difference between revisions

To-day Hierophant Orcott will take the very dead body of the late Baron Von Palm to Washington, Pennsylvania, and there solemnly put it in the oven prepared for its reception, apply the torch to the funeral pyre, and gather up the remaining ashes in a genuine Hindoo cremation urn specially presented for the purpose. It will be the second cremation on this continent –that is, since it came under the dominton of our race, fifty years ago the body of Mr. Henry Lawrens, {{Style S-Lost|*}} South Carolina gentlemen, was reduced to ashes, but the practire failed to become fashionable, and we have kept on burying as of old.  

The Baron died last May, and his initial funeral took place in this city with a {{Style S-Lost|*mble}} of Egyptian ceremonies conducted by a littlo set of people calling themselves Theosophists to whom in his eccentricity he had attached himself during life. Hierophant Olcott presided on the occasion in {{Style S-Lost|*}} Egyptian style, and after the funeral the body was embalmed, not according to the Egyptian method, in pitch and {{Style S-Lost|*ths}}, but in carbolic powder. That substance has kept it all this time in good preservation, so that the body to be burned to-day is recognizable in all its features as that of the dead Baron. This Bavarian nobleman was the fortunate possessor of a litile property, and so the provision of his will directing the burning of his corpse can be carried out, spite of the expense, which is considerable. We believe the cremation would have taken place soon after his death if the furnace bad been ready, but it is only now that the process can be gone through with, and that far away in Pennsylvania. However, the delay has enured to the notoriety of the Theosophists, of the Baron, of Hierophant Olcott, and cremation.

This is a free country, and people's dead bodies may here be burned, buried, entombed, embalmed, preserved in spirits, or dissected and set up asskeletons in medical colleges, according as they {{Style S-Lost|o*heir}} friends may desire. A man's body is one of the things he leaves behind him, and if he chooses to provide in his will, as the Baron did, that it shall be burned, nobody has a right to say aught against his so doing. However, the trouble and expense of cremating are at present so great that we advise against the leaving of such directions. It is a long distance to that part of Pennsylvania, and the cost of conveying a funeral party thither, to say nothing of the cost of fuel, is great. Besides, cremation is not our customary way of dealing with corpses, and the present method is not likely to be changed by a man here and there ordering the burnung of his remains. There is something, too, very disagreeable about making a great and peculiar public fuss over a dead body, representing as it does to the friends of the deceased an ludividual held in affection. After many centuries of practics we have grown to attach sacredness to interments, and the burying of the dead is a universal custom. Cremation can never become the custom here unless it is forced upon us by hygienic necessities, and perhaps by law. But if that day ever comes at all it is yet far off. As a mensure of economy in funerals, cremation is urged ; but until it becomes extensvely practised the process must continue to be even more costly than the present method, which indeed is only made burdensome to the poor by reason of merely conventional {{Style S-Lost|sin}} as as to the manner of doing honor to the dead.

Sir–Some people, they say, are born great, and some have greatness thrust upon them. I was reminded of this old adage to day, upon hearing that a person named Jesse Sheppard, who calls himself a medium, had boasted that he was a Fellow of the Theosophical Society. He also had the impudence to call me “Harry,” and to intimate that he was a particular friend of mine. May I trespass upon your courtesy so far as to say that both the Society and I repudiate any connection {{Style S-Lost|w*tever}} with Mr. Sheppard ? We may be Theosophists, but really have done nothing to deserve such treatment.