... I saw many marble feet and matted heads as the cloths were raised, and one livid, swollen, and mangled body of a drowned girl,—who probably had intended to go out to service in some American family,—to which some rags still adhered, with a string, half concealed by the flesh, about its swollen neck; the coiled-up wreck of a human hulk, gashed by the rocks or fishes, so that the bone and muscle were exposed, but quite bloodless,—merely red and white,—with wide-open and staring eyes, yet lustreless, dead-lights; or like the cabin windows of a stranded vessel, filled with sand. ...
On the whole, it was not so impressive a scene as I might have expected. If I had found one body cast upon the beach in some lonely place, it would have affected me more. I sympathized rather with the winds and waves, as if to toss and mangle these poor human bodies was the order of the day. If this was the law of Nature, why waste any time in awe or pity? If the last day were come, we should not think so much about the separation of friends or the blighted prospects of individuals. I saw that corpses might be multiplied, as on the field of battle, till they no longer affected us in any degree, as exceptions to the common lot of humanity. Take all the graveyards together, they are always the majority. It is the individual and private that demands our sympathy. A man can attend but one funeral in the course of his life, can behold but one corpse. Yet I saw that the inhabitants of the shore would be not a little affected by this event. They would watch there many days and nights for the sea to give up its dead, and their imaginations and sympathies would supply the place of mourners far away, who as yet knew not of the wreck. Many days after this, something white was seen floating on the water by one who was sauntering on the beach. It was approached in a boat, and found to be the body of a woman, which had risen in an upright position, whose white cap was blown back with the wind. I saw that the beauty of the shore itself was wrecked for many a lonely walker there, until he could perceive, at last, how its beauty was enhanced by wrecks like this, and it acquired thus a rarer and sublimer beauty still. ...
<http://eserver.org/thoreau/capecd01.html>
Carl
>From: "Max B. Sawicky" <sawicky at bellatlantic.net>
>
>In a bygone age I was an "escort" in a hospital
>for the chronically ill. Our job was to convey
>patients, both living and formerly so, here and
>there. You get used to corpses pretty fast.
>Republicans too.
>
>>I'm no fan of the police, but I recall a remark Studs Turkel made in, I
>>believe, Working about police doing chores that most people wouldn't want
>>to
>>do for any amount of money. This was made in connection with a cop
>>recollecting his experience cutting down the corpse of some guy who had
>>hanged himself in his attic. The body had been there awhile, and the cop
>>said he had to keep twisting to keep out of the way of maggots falling on
>>his newly cleaned pants.
>>
>>There is much to be said for a deskjob.
>>
>>Carl