Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 18, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1886 — What It Costa to Die. [ARTICLE]

What It Costa to Die.

The cost of cremation by the new company in this city, it is said, will only be $25. The fact that a person dyiug in New York can have suit tble mortuary rites performed for the comparatively small sum of $25 is most interesting, and will, we feel sure, do much to rob death of its terror. Dying in New York is a luxury, and one about which most peoDle show a strange aniount of thoughtlessness and inconsideration. A citizen can live three years in Arkansas for the price of a conventionally respectable interment in New York. Yet few take such a fact as this into the slightest consideration in consenting to a demise. We are, indeed, acquainted with one conscientious old Irish woman, with a complication of diseases, who faithfully attends tho dispensary, because she is “on her relations,” and she knows and admits that they cannot afford to bury her. fcuch a spirit deserves an historical record and wide’ emulation. The fact ds, we are much in need of a society for the cultivation, not of plain living, but of plain dying. In these hard times it is often little less than criminal that a main subject his estate to the prolific expenditure cf a funeral. We have . heard of a gentleman who, at the solicitation of his wife, gave up tobacco and thereby, in the next over SSOO, which all went at last for bis burial expenses. Hero was certainly a disproportion between eftort and its result that is most painful to well-balanced minds, and very disheartening to the aiiti-tobaCco propaganda. —New York Medical llecord.