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.This service regularly featured a rendition ofHandel’s Messiah, and was “particularly satisfactory to the ladies,”whose eyes were (at least according to cremationists) also delighted bythe handsome iron gate, the immaculate lawn, the extensive flowerbeds, the pure white marble columbarium, the glistening ribbon-wrapped niches, and the elegant stained glass (one depicting a womanholding a torch).32Some Christian cremationists looked forward to the possibility ofbringing the now-harmless dead back into cities and churches.“Whatsentimental value cathedrals, chapels, and church-yards would take onif their niches, crypts and mounds were filled with the cenotaphs andvases that ensafe the snowy ashes of the dear departed!” wrote the Rev-erend Howard Henderson, an Episcopal minister.“Every great citywould have its Westminster, every capital its Escurial.” The ReverendHodges, another Episcopalian, also saw great artistic and didactic144Bricks and Mortar, 1896–1963possibilities for a “house of the departed.set in the midst of the city.”“Such a building,” he said, “would offer large opportunities to art andartists.It would be a building that would uplift the thoughts of all whoenter, made splendid perhaps with paintings, teaching the great truthsof the present and the future.[on] memorial windows, through whosepictured panes the sun would tell the story of the cross as the symbol ofredemption, and of the altar as the symbol of the life to come.”33ScatteringOne of the most important concessions cremationists made to conser-vative Christianity concerned the disposition of the ashes.Like theproblem of the disposition of the corpse, the problem of what to dowith ashes admits of multiple solutions.Ashes can be scattered orplaced in an urn.If scattered, they can be strewn on land, at sea, or(today) from the air.If inurned, they can be deposited in a columbar-ium, placed on the living room mantle, nestled into a church wall, orsquirreled away in a safe deposit box.They can also be buried.Ashescan even be commingled.Husband and wife can lie together after deathin a common urn, making good this cremationist prayer:Let not their dust be partedFor their two hearts in life were single-hearted.Conversely, ashes can be divided and disposed of in different ways atdifferent places.The ashes of Helena Blavatsky, cofounder (along withHenry Olcott) of the Theosophical Society, were reputedly divided intothree parts and inurned in Theosophical shrines in India, London, andNew York.34Ashes also had more fanciful uses.While visiting Japan during theGilded Age, Buddhist sympathizer Lafcadio Hearn learned from ageisha of the practice of drinking a combination of sake and ashes.Inthe United States a physician reportedly mixed the ashes of a “tramp”with glue and then cast them as a small statue.(The result was said tobe “charming.”) A would-be poet suggested yet another use in this“Ode to Sir Henry Thompson”:I think the apartment is pleasant,The ornaments, too, are on suite;That hour-glass you see was a presentFrom Bolus of Requiem Street.It holds what remains of Aunt Lizzy—The notion, I think, is sublime;The Memorial Idea145Humanity’s ashes are busyIn place of the sands of Old Time.35Many of America’s first generation of cremationists echoed Sir HenryThompson in favoring scattering.Colonel Olcott followed the Hinduexample when he spread De Palm’s ashes over water, and Mr.BenjaminPitman, influenced more by a love of nature than by Hinduism’s Vedas,reportedly placed the incinerated remains of his beloved wife at theroots of a rose bush.At a ceremony billed as the first Buddhist crema-tion in America, the ashes were “scattered to the four winds, so that noman should know whence they had gone.”36In many respects, early cremationist logic demanded scattering.Asone observer noted:The more ardent adherent of cremation not only regards earth burial as per-nicious but he usually looks upon the cemetery as an unwarranted waste ofland.[H]e reminds us that Nature is economical and most exacting in de-manding obedience to her laws, which are immutable and decree that noth-ing shall be wasted or misapplied, and as Nature has supplied all the ele-ments constituting the human body, they must be returned to their originalsources sooner or later.Therefore, says this zealous cremationist, the ashesmust be consigned to the earth as soon after death and as directly as possi-ble; but since the cemetery is condemned by him and must be abandoned,there is but one disposition to make of the ashes, and that is, to use a popu-lar phrase, “Scatter them to the four winds.”37During the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, most cre-mationists saw cremation as final disposition (not a preparation forburial or some other disposition).For Gilded Age cremation reformersthe climax in the postmortem drama was the moment of cremation, andscattering a fitting denouement
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