Address to the Citizens of Boston and Vicinity on the Subject of a Rural Cemetery
Disbound 8vo, 7pp. Lacking rear wrap; front cover with closed split toward left edge, chipping along the edges; else Good. Signature of Rev. George Richards, the pastor of the Central Congregational Church in Boston. The pamphlet argues, "The burial of the dead in the midst of populous cities is fast becoming as offensive to the public taste and feeling, as it is injurious to the public health. And strange as the prophecy would have seemed half a century ago, in far less than half a century hence, an interment in the interior of such a city as Boston, amidst the dust and smoke and perpetual din of its busy pavements- equally a profanation of the dead and a poison to the living-will be regarded as an abomination not to be thought of..." The address also promotes the "pecuniary profitableness" of privatization, necessary for operating outside city limits, and the opportunity for the highly landscaped and aestheticized grounds of rural cemeteries to be a recreational destination for the living, too. "The preference for burial amidst the purity and quietness of nature, where undying affection can testify its life by freshness of verdure and bloom of flowers, must soon become universal."