Declension

“ It is by no means to be expected of beginners in the language that they will attempt to master the rules of euphonic combination in a body, before going on to learn the paradigms of inflection. On the contrary, the leading paradigms of declension may best be learned outright, without attention, or with only a minimum of attention, to euphonic rule. In taking up conjugation, however, it is practically, as well as theoretically, better to learn the forms as combinations of stem and ending, with attention to such laws of combination as apply in the particular cases concerned. ”

“ Wetness accelerates decay. When we hear the rain fall in the silent night, we are compelled to think, shuddering, how the horrible process of destruction begins in the grave of some beloved one whom we have recently buried.
The same stench that assails our nostrils when we approach a corpse that has lain a long time above ground, meets us when we open a grave; the same poisonous gases are evolved under ground from a decaying corpus as upon the surface of the earth. ”

“ Not many years ago the dry-grinder, whose services are mostly required in the grinding of forks, received that dust into his lungs, and there it settled and grew in bulk until it surely brought about his early death. Even now, I am sorry to say, the evil has not wholly been overcome, but what with air tubes and respirators, the dry-grinder’s life has been much prolonged. Let us hope that in course of time a perfect remedy may be devised, for human life is a heavy price to pay for forks. ”

“ The soil was damp; and a nauseous odour, emanating from it, impregnated the air. When the sun lay for several days upon the place, even in the depth of winter,—and invariably throughout the summer,—the stench was so intolerable that not a dwelling in the neighbourhood was seen with a window open. Nevertheless, that sickly, fetid odour penetrated into every house, and every room, and every inhabited nook or corner, in that vicinity; and the clothes of the poor inmates smelt, and their food tasted, of the damp grave!
The cemetery was crowded with the remains of mortality. ”

“ Finally, any contact with the corpse of man or beast, whether intentional or accidental, rendered a man unclean. The house in which a man died, with all the utensils, was unclean; any one who touched a grave or a human bone was tainted. ”

“ Nay, but how tortured is the frightful seed The spark intense within it, all without Mordant corrosion gnashing and champing hard For ruin on the naked small redoubt. Bitter, to fold the issue, and make no sally; To have the mystery, but not go forth; To bear, but retaliate nothing, given to save The spark in storms of corrosion, as seeds from the north. The sharper, more horrid the pressure, the harder the heart That saves the blue grain of eternal fire Within its quick, committed to hold and wait And suffer unheeding, only forbidden to expire. ”

“ He lures her into this empty house, and, choosing a favorable moment, seizes her by the throat and strangles her to death. To prevent the identification of the corpse, he decides to remove the head, hands, and feet, parts which are characteristic. He takes off the clothes and burns them. We found the ashes in the kitchen stove. He takes the body to the bathroom, and, placing it in the porcelain tub, turns on the water, and then proceeds with his diabolical scheme. ”

“ In the midst of the piled-up, blackened ruins—bricks, mortar, tiles, lead, and ragged and split beams, huge pieces of wood snapped and torn like matches—we toiled on hour after hour till the dark night came, when the gas pipes that had been laid bare and plugged were unstopped, and the gas lit, so that it flared and blazed and cast a strange wild light over the ruined place. There had been flames burst forth two or three times from parts of the ruins, but a few sprinklings from the fire engine in attendance had put them out; and as we worked on the rubbish grew cooler and cooler. ”

“ Whether the matter passing into decay be an accumulation of soaking straw and cabbage leaves in some miserable cellar, or the garbage of a slaughter-house, or an overflowing cesspool, or dead dogs floated at high water into the mouth of a sewer, or stinking fish thrown overboard in Billingsgate-dock, or the remains of human corpses undergoing their last chemical changes in consecrated earth, the previous history of the decomposed material is of no moment whatever. ”

“ My senses reeled, as I saw first one heavy sledge descend, then another. The stake crashed through the coffin and deep into the ground beneath, driven by the relentless blows.
Suddenly, apparently from the bottom of the grave, came a muffled wailing cry, increasing to a horrible, blood-curdling shriek.
The mob stood for a moment as if paralyzed, then, to a man, fled precipitately, stopping for neither weapons nor tools. I found temporary relief in unconsciousness.... ”

“ My eyes got accustomed to the dim light streaming in through the broken roof, and I satisfied myself, judging by the great length of the body from head to foot, that I was looking at the corpse of a man—a corpse that had apparently once had a sheet spread over it, and that had lain rotting on the trestles under the open sky long enough for the linen to take the livid, light-blue tinge of mildew and decay which now covered it. ”

“ Hence, in order to be cleansed of this infection the human body must needs be dissolved into its primary components: and when a thing is destroyed by fire it is said to be reduced to ashes. wherefore the name of ashes is given to those things into which the human body is dissolved. ”

“ Necrosis of the tissues is likely to set in: the flesh corrupts, falls from the bone sometimes in tatters; and the colors of its putrefaction simulate the hues of vegetable decay,—the ghastly grays and pinks and yellows of trunks rotting down into the dark soil which gave them birth. The human victim moulders as the trees moulder,—crumbles and dissolves as crumbles the substance of the dead palms and balatas: the Death-of-the-Woods is upon him. ”

“ He went on, stepping across the fissure where the water flowed in, and keeping to the dank rim which widened as he proceeded. Although the walls rose roughly perpendicular with here an outward bulge, there a falling back to a steep incline, there was visible no passage nor even a split, save where the water came sliding down the fissure that was no more than a seam. All along the wall, high up wherever a smooth surface offered, there were the carvings, with little variation in their sinister portent, the great chain of evil, and the death of many. ”

“ The dead are disposed of by cremation in gas furnaces, or by dessication; and the establishments for performing these operations, and for disposing of the remains, are under strictest governmental supervision. ”

“ For this is very certain, that all question respecting the effects of cleaning is merely one of the amount of injury. Every picture which has undergone more friction than is necessary at intervals for the removal of dust or dirt, has suffered injury to some extent. The last touches of the master leave the surface of the color with a certain substantial texture, the bloom of which, if once reached under the varnish, must inevitably be more or less removed by friction of any kind—how much more by friction aided by solvents? ”

“ To those who criticise the advocates of cremation for quoting ancient examples only, of harm from graves, this instance will appear sufficiently recent and intimate.”
Opponents of incineration, who lay great stress upon the disinfecting powers of the earth, forget that the soil is easily saturated by the emanations from the dead. ”

“ Hence, the seven days’ uncleanness, signifying the deadness of the soul, and the offensiveness of its works. Coincident in meaning was the defilement of things by the contagion of death. For man’s sake, the ground itself is cursed (Gen. iii, 17) , and every product of the earth and every possession of man upon it is involved in the curse, and until delivered from it, is unsanctified to man’s use. Hence, the house, the bed, the furniture and utensils, were defiled by the presence of the dead and unfitted for the use of the clean, the living. ”

“ There can be but one result. Days will elapse before the rubbish can be sufficiently removed to permit the recovery of these bodies, and long before that every corpse will be a putrid mass, giving forth those frightful emanations of decaying human flesh that in a crowded community like this can have but one result—the dreadful typhus. Every battlefield has demonstrated the necessity of the hasty interment of decaying bodies, and the stench that already arises is a [Pg 149] forerunner of impending danger. Burn the wreck, burn the wreck. ”

“ Others are stripped and hung up by the arms, their feet are tied together, and the end of a heavy piece of timber is put between their legs in order to stretch their bodies, and so prepare them for the torturing lash—and in this situation they are often whipped till their bodies are covered with blood and mangled flesh—and, in order to add the greatest keenness to their sufferings, their wounds are washed with liquid salt! ”

“ The destruction takes place both from above and below at once, so that the gable and the foundation are dashed in pieces with one blow, and that even to the neck, i.e., up to the point at which the roof or gable rests upon the walls. ”

“ He is next seized with violent delirium, and in his horrible paroxysms froths at the mouth, tears the flesh from his hands and arms, pulls his hair, and beats himself violently against the ground, meanwhile uttering the most piercing cries, till, completely exhausted, he remains without motion or feeling, and death ensues. ”

“ Human excrement is the least offensive part of the concrete, which is composed of all the drugs, minerals and poisons used in mechanics and manufactures, enriched with the putrefying carcases of beasts and men, and mixed with the scourings of all the washtubs, kennels, and common sewers within the bills of mortality. ”

“ If a body was burned that day, then there is a body yet to be accounted for, and the authorities must guard the ashes as their only chance to make out a case. Of course they can't identify ashes, but the expert chemists claim they can tell whether a human body or only an empty coffin was put into the furnace. ”

“ Earthen vessels cannot render each other unclean, but fluid does so. If fluid becomes unclean, it renders vessels unclean. This is the proverb, “What makes thee unclean, cannot make me unclean, but thou canst make me unclean.”
7. Everything743 which disallows the heave-offering renders the fluid unclean so as to be a primary uncleanness, for rendering a person unclean, and disallowing him, except he was one who washed by day.744 This is the proverb, “What makes thee unclean, cannot make me unclean, but thou canst make me unclean.” ”

“ The corrosive body regarded specially as simply a pure earthy body, must stand opposite to the two moveable elements. The corrodent is therefore constantly striving to draw water and air into itself, and upon this depend also the effects produced by the corroding matters. The corrosive calcareous earth acts in a destructive manner,143 it abstracts water and air from bodies. ”

“ It's like the chimbleys that get stuffed up with soot, but they can set a sweep with a brush to clear them out. No doctor can get with a chisel and hammer into my lungs and chip out the clay as is formed there, and no brush will sweep out the dust as is lodged there. ”

“ The section should be mounted in glycerine or Farrant’s medium and kept from the light or it will become too darkly stained.
Chloride of gold is employed to demonstrate the peripheral terminations of nerves. It can only be employed within the first half hour after the tissue has been removed from the living body. The pieces of tissue must be small and may be stained in bulk, sections being subsequently made.
A half per cent. solution in distilled water is employed. The tissue is transferred to this on its removal from the body, until it becomes lemon coloured. ”

“ Bud Gregory said off-handedly, "Dust." Then he waved his hand exuberantly.
"Y'know, suh?" he said. "It sure does feel good to know that I got ten dollars a day comin' in without no bother! I don't have to work myself to death no more. I can just set if I want to! You sure are a friend o' mine, Mr. Murfree!"
"What do you mean by dust?" demanded Murfree sharply.
"Just dust," said Bud Gregory. "Settlin'. It's all bustin' down all the time as it drops, sendin' out hunksa stuff. It ain't thick, but it—uh—kinda accumulates." ”

“ Of course a relentless hand that stops at nothing, with a grub-axe and spade, could do it in fifteen minutes, but the roots would be cut or bruised and the pulling and tugging be so violent that not a bit of earth would cleave, and thus the fatal drying process set in almost before the digging was completed. ”

“ Leaks had been discovered from time to time, small tricklings and droppings of earth, which brought Cavanaugh and Henderson to the spot and caused the greatest tension until they had been done away with. The air had a tendency to bore holes upward through the mud. But these were invariably stanched with clay, or, if growing serious, bags of shavings or waste, the air pressure blowing outward from below being sufficient to hold these in place, provided the breach was not too wide. ”

“ It is also shown in this, that all burning acts on minute pores of the body burnt; so that burning undermines, penetrates, pricks, and stings the body like the points of an infinite number of needles. It is also an effect of this, that all strong waters (if suited to the body on which they are acting) act as fire does, in consequence of their corroding and pungent nature. ”