'Only A Launatic!'

Observer, Volume XIV, Issue 784, 13 January 1894, Page 2

'Only A Launatic!'

If that impossibly optimistic person Mark Tapley to wit, had been at Waikomiti cemetery a few days ago I venture to think that even he would have found it a trifle hard to preserve his characteristic jollity. The day was wet, pouring wet ; the sky resembled a leaden coffin in hue, more than anything else ; the trees and shrubs and flowers were drowned in rain dropp ; the paths and walks were sodden with water; a misty pall of grey hung about the distant hills ; the tombstones and monuments of marble and of granite were bathed in rain. Six funerals were expected, and some of the mourners appertaining thereto wandered about disconsolate, waiting the arrival of the gloomy and hideous sable-hued vehicles which custom decrees must play such a conspicuous part on these melancholy occasions.

Anything more utterly depressing than Waikomiti cemetery on a drenohing wet day, especially when the drenohing wet day follows a drenching wet night, as on this occasion, it would be hard to imagine. Presently one of those unhappy mourners, rambling aimlessly about in the pitless downpour, stubbed his toe against something hard. The objeot was loosely covered with ti-tree branches. The mourner's curiosity was aroused. He investigated. The ♦ something hard ' proved to be a plain coffin. A very plain coffiD, with a bit of tin nailed on the lid, like a tag on a plug of tobacco. Near at hand was a partly dug grave. The coffin had evidently been lying where it was found for some time. Possibly all the previous pouring wet night. The mourner summoned his friends, and then curious to know how this forlorn-looking coffin, with its rain-Boaked lid, came to be lying there deserted, with the grave evidently designed

for its reception but hardly begun, they were told that the coffin contained the remains of a lunatio from the Asylum .

It was late in the day before that too inquisitive mourner and his friends quitted the cemetery. Yet when they left that, coffin was still lying where the inquisitive one had almost stumbled over it in the morning, and the partly-dug grave remained as it was when he first saw it. Possibly that coffin is still lying under its thin covering of ti-tree, awaiting interment. You see the • remains '' are only those of a lunatic— or of a pauper, one or the other— so what does it matter ? Presumably the dead man or woman had no friends. If friends there had been they would surely have protested, would have urged that even the remains of a lunatic or of a pauper deserve the respect due to the dead.

I have thought it well to draw public attention to this matter, because I am curious to know whether such cases aB the one under notice are of common oocurence at Waikomiti, or whether this particular oase was an isolated one, and really due to unavoidable circumstances. The enquiry is worth making. I should also be glad to know whether the burial service was read over the remains of this poor f reodless one. Can anyone tell me ?