“The postmaster of a village in Moravia ‘died’ in a fit of epilepsy, and was buried three days afterwards in due form. He had a little pet dog which showed great affection towards him, and after the burial the dog remained upon the man’s grave and howled dismally, and would not be driven away. Several times the dog was taken home forcibly, but whenever it could escape it immediately returned. This lasted for a week, and became the talk of the village. About a year afterwards that part of the grave-yard had to be removed owing to an enlargement in building the church, and consequently the grave of the postmaster was opened, and the body was found in such a state and position as to leave no doubt that he had been buried alive, had returned to consciousness, and had died in the grave. The physician who had signed the certificate of death went insane on that account, soon after the discovery was made.”--_Premature Burial, p. 109, London ed._ CHAPTER X. THE DANGER OF HASTY BURIALS. EARLY burials are advocated and defended by certain writers on sanitary grounds; and there is, no doubt, something to be said for them, provided the body shows unmistakable signs of dissolution; but to impose a general rule upon Englishmen by Parliament, or upon Americans by State Legislature, as has been urged, would add to the existing evil of perfunctory and mistaken diagnosis of death, and greatly increase the number of premature interments. The Romans kept the bodies of the dead a week before burial, lest through haste they should inter them while life remained. Servius, in his commentary on Virgil, tells us--“That on the eighth day they burned the body, and on the ninth put its ashes in the grave.” Plato enjoined the bodies of the dead to be kept until the third day, _in order_ (as he says) _to be satisfied of the reality of the death_. Quintilian explains why the Romans delayed burials as follows:--“For what purpose do ye imagine that long-delayed interments were invented? Or on what account is it that the mournful pomp of funeral solemnities is always interrupted by sorrowful groans and piercing cries? Why, for no other reason, but because we have seen persons return to life after they were about to be laid in the grave as dead.” “For this reason,” adds Lancisi, in “De Subita. Mort.,” lib. i., cap. 15, “the Legislature has wisely and prudently prohibited the immediate, or the too speedy, interment of all dead persons, and especially of such as have the misfortune to be cut off by a sudden death.” [THE ADVANTAGE OF DELAY.]