Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 September 1875 — In a Hurry for the Funeral. [ARTICLE]

In a Hurry for the Funeral.

The San Francisco Chronicle relates the following incident: About ten o’clock yesterday morning two Chinamen visited a prominent undertakingestablishment in this city, and the spokesman, who talked very good pigeon English, said: “One Chinawoman she muchee die; we want bury her twelve o’clock.” A man was dispatched for the City Physician to make an inspection and give a certificate,- and also to take the measure of the dead woman. The pair wended their way to Brenham place, and in a small room on the third floor, laid out on a mat, was the supposed corpse. The undertaker, thinking only of his business, pulled out his tape-line and asked the doctor to hold one end of it while the size of the coffin required was ascertained. They were a little surprised as they stretched the line over the body to see the woman turn slightly and open her eyes. The Chinaman expressed no surprise, but simply said: “ Oh, she be dead by twelve o’clock.” The doctor, after making a careful examination, concluded that the woman was beyond help, and was on the eve of dissolution, but the undertaker decided that it would be as well to postpone the funeral. Except in the cases of prominent and wealthy Chinamen, whose estates will bear the expense of slavish spread of varnished hog and other funeral meats, the Chinese almost invariably hurry oft their dead to the cemetery before they are fairly cold. Almost any undertaker can furnish experience like this of yesterday, and there can be little doubt that many poor Chinamen are put under the sod before life is extinct. —A case is now on trial in the Circuit Court at Des Moines, lowa, which is based on one of tlje most remarkable occurrences on record. It is a suit brought by a man named Couch vs. The Watson Coal Company, for damages for injuries sustained in a coal mine. Mr. Couch was standing at the bottom of the shaft, which is 135 feet deep. A cage, or elevator, was descending, on which were men and tools. When about thirty feet down an iron blasting drill three "feet long and one and one-fourth inches in diameter, with one end flattened and made sharp, fell from the cage and struck Mr. Crouch, who was in a stooping posture, in the back, near the spinal column, in the region of the kid- , neys, the sharp end entering first. The rod went through his body. The blow prostrated the wounded man, and a comrade pulled the rod from his body. Mr. Couch not only recovered from the effects of the accident, but is able to do as much work as ever. *" —An attempt is to be made to remove the celebrated large grape-vine of Montecito, Santa Barbara County, Cal., to Philadelphia for the Centennial Exposition.