Extract from the Progrès Colonial of the Island of Mauritius.

It is not only in our countries that the newspapers, we will not yet say sympathize, but become humanized toward Spiritism, to which they begin to grant the right of citizenship. One reads in the Progrès colonial, newspaper of Port-Louis, Island of Mauritius, dated June 15th, 1866:

“Every day we receive two or three of these Spiritist communications. But if we have abstained from reproducing them until now, it is because we are not yet in a condition to consecrate a place to that extraordinary thing called Spiritism. Let our readers, curious by nature, have a little patience: they will not wait long. If we publish this little writing signed Lazarus, it is because it concerns that poor Georges, dead and buried so wretchedly.

“Sir, “I read today a correspondence inserted in your newspaper signed “An eyewitness,” relating the manner in which they buried the corpse of the unfortunate G. Lemeure.

“For a very long time, sir, I knew perfectly well that if misery is not a vice, it is at least one of the greatest calamities there is in the world; but what I did not want to admit is that men should worship the golden calf to such a point that they no longer respect all that is most solemn, greatest and most sacred for us: death!…

“Thus, poor Georges, endowed with a gentle, honest and modest character, condemned to live in the greatest penury, bearing the trials of this world with courage and even with joy, always ready to render services to his neighbor, you went to die thus isolated, far from those who loved you, who perhaps mourned you; and it is still necessary, in order to humiliate your shade, that men, that brothers should dig you a hole in the earth, alone, alone with nothingness! as though your poverty made you unworthy of sharing, like your fellows, a sacred ground. Moreover, they did not even do you the charity of a coffin, of four boards! You are still very fortunate, this good humanity thinks, to rest in the damp and cold earth, forgotten by all! Besides, what does it matter to them that your body should rot there, without a friend coming to shed a tear, to cast a flower, to bring a remembrance? “I stop here, for I am still indignant that they did not fulfill even the formalities established on such an occasion toward the unfortunate. In all civilized countries, the relatives or friends of a dead person, found by the authorities, are given twenty-four hours to come and recognize and claim that person. If at the end of that delay no one has come, then they deposit the person in holy ground, always observing the attentions due to death. But here they abstain from such formalities and content themselves, if you have not the means to pay the expenses of the coffin, with throwing you into some corner, like an animal, and covering you with two or three handfuls of dust. “I repeat, sir, misery is a great scourge.”

Lazarus.