There are, I am sorry to say, individuals who think that those who are cremated let themselves be burned only because they are anxious to create for themselves a little notoriety after death. I can but pity the people who believe that Dr. Gross and Garbaldi, for instance, adopted such a means to attract public attention after decease. Those who now order their bodies incinerated after that mysterious power called life is fled, have the courage of their opinions, recognize the many advantages of incineration, and allow their convictions to triumph over local and even family prejudice; they are the true martyrs of cremation. CHAPTER VI. BURIAL ALIVE.—CREMATION FROM AN ÆSTHETIC AND RELIGIOUS POINT OF VIEW. Our great American poet, Edgar Allan Poe, says: “To be buried alive is beyond question the most terrific of all extremes which have ever fallen to the lot of mere mortality.” Is any death more horrible than this? To be embraced, unprepared, down in the deep dark grave! To awake again with the greatest longing for life, suffering the most severe bodily tortures, in the coffin! To realize that there is no escape from inevitable death! Who can conceive the feeling of finding one’s self in the grave, the blood rushing to the head, the body trembling convulsively in the vain endeavors of casting off the oppressing weight, the organs of respiration laboring without avail for air, the muscles of the whole body working without result, and above all, being mindful of certain death near at hand? From time to time anti-crematists, advocates of earth burial, of course, assert that cases of burial alive are exceedingly rare and occur very seldom. This is very erroneous. Our newspapers teem with the reports of such cases, and one must be a careless reader indeed not to observe them. As I am a daily peruser of some specimen of the secular press, and hardly anything of importance escapes my notice, I succeeded in making a collection of cases of burial alive, from which I will cite some striking examples. A Wheeling, W. Va., special despatch to the _Chicago Tribune_ relates the terrible fate of a young married lady as follows:—