The Erewhonians, therefore, hold that death,
like life, is an affair of being more frightened than hurt.
They burn their dead, and the ashes are presently scattered over any
piece of ground which the deceased may himself have chosen. No one is
permitted to refuse this hospitality to the dead: people, therefore,
generally choose some garden or orchard which they may have known and
been fond of when they were young. The superstitious hold that those
whose ashes are scattered over any land become its jealous guardians from
that time forward; and the living like to think that they shall become
identified with this or that locality where they have once been happy.
They do not put up monuments, nor write epitaphs, for their dead, though
in former ages their practice was much as ours, but they have a custom
which comes to much the same thing, for the instinct of preserving the
name alive after the death of the body seems to be common to all mankind.
They have statues of themselves made while they are still alive (those,
that is, who can afford it), and write inscriptions under them, which are
often quite as untruthful as are our own epitaphs--only in another way.
For they do not hesitate to describe themselves as victims to ill temper,
jealousy, covetousness, and the like, but almost always lay claim to
personal beauty, whether they have it or not, and, often, to the
possession of a large sum in the funded debt of the country.
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