Democratic Sentinel, Volume 9, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 July 1885 — The Whited Sepulchers of New Orleans. [ARTICLE]

The Whited Sepulchers of New Orleans.

New Orleans, being built in a marsh, cannot have cellars for the houses of the living or graves for the dead. At a burial the services of a mason, and not of a gravedigger, are required, and the coffin is walled up in a brick or stone cell, painted white, which makes a graveyard resemble the parked Avagon-train of a large army. * Often families or associations have large tombs, containing several rows of cells 1 , one above the other, and there are some monuments in each one, the most prominent ones being to Confederate officers and iiremen. In the National Cemetery, on the old battleground, there are 12,192 graves, of which 6,913 are “known” to contain the remains of Union soldiers from twenty-three States; 5,279 graves are marked “unknown.”—Cor. Providence Journal. To restore the original qualities to steel which has been burnt in the forge, plunge the metal at a red heat into a mixture of two parts of pitch, two parts of train oil, one part of tallow, and a small quantity of common salt. Eepeat the operation two or three times. Excellent results have frequently been so obtained.