Cremation is humane, healthful, and, most of all methods, consonant to the natural impulse of Christianized veneration for the dead; serving and honoring that impulse by preventing the exposure of the dead to those visible elemental and chemical conditions and operations which breed a revolt of the feelings, and tend to surround the subject with an atmosphere of abhorrence. Undoubtedly, one result of adopting generally the in-cinerative burial, will be a disassociation in our ideas from that existing and shocking conception of horrible bodily decay, in which almost every thought bestowed upon the dead is necessarily enveloped, and we will learn to contemplate the body with the cheerful philosophy of the Persian poet, Omar Khayyam:— “‘Tis but a tent where takes his one day’s rest A Sultan to the realms of death addrest; The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash Strikes and prepares it for another guest.” At a burial there is but darkness, at a cremation rosy light unaccompanied by fustiness; the dead is really reduced to ashes, and with him the time-honored saying, “Peace to his ashes,” is not a hollow phrase, as it is with those who are interred. Those who do not wish to miss religious and other ceremonies at incinerations may use any form of burial service they like, and those who desire to dispense with them may do so. And those who already have beloved dead in the cemeteries may rest by their side when the end is come, for the ashes can be interred as well as the body. A Sicilian poet suggested that along with the ashes thus buried might be deposited the seeds of some flower,—such as heart’s-ease, violets, or forget-me-nots,—so that when it sprung up, the friends and relatives might gather the blossoms from year to year as a dear memorial of the life that lasts beyond the tomb; and Tennyson’s (“In Memoriam”) poetic verses would be realized:— “And from his ashes may be made The violet of his native land.” Only when cremation is practiced, can a family obtain the remains (ashes, of course) of its friends and relatives who have died in a foreign land; only then it is possible to deposit such remains with those of the ancestors. With the Chinese it is customary to always inter the dead in their native land; when they are far away from home they inhume their deceased temporarily, but at the earliest opportunity remove them to China,—a usage that deserves to be imitated. The small urn containing the parental ashes may be taken by migratory man into the new world or the old, always preserved as the most sacred relic of the family.