Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1898. DEATH NY FIRE.

Te Aroha News, Volume XIV, Issue 2070, 20 January 1898, Page 2

Te Aroha AND Ohinemuri News

THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1898. DEATH NY FIRE.

• ‘ This above all— bo thins own self ha bras, bod lb must follow as the nighb the day ■r. Thoo oeneb nob then be false to any naan.' „ SUASESrEAhB. '

Of.. the common fates that -overtake mankind death by lire is generally regarded as the most fearful. Death by’drowning is traditionally described as being easy euthanasia—as tho Greeks term /it—»a pleasant mode of death.. That this is so is confirmed by the consensus of modern testimony iu the many instances where persons have penetrated the borderlands of the other life ;' when each flickering pulsation of the heart would, seem to be the last, before resuscitation by the improved methods practised in these days has restored the moribund to the full posses sion of their senses. In a curious and interesting work we saw recently- Dr Brown’s Psychological Mysteries - several well authenticated oases'nre quoted in which, after the first frenzied struggle, the sensation of gradual dissolution was described as being rather pleasant than Kesuscita tion, however, it is generally conceded is a most painful process. May not death by fire be attended id its later stages by an equal absence of physical suffering ? Many of the unfortunate creatures terribly burned by the showdrß of. ipolten lead froth the roof of the building in which a bazaar was being held in Paris last year, declared that they would rather have been permitted to die than h aye been Rescued to. endure th e terrible sufferings that their recovery. We know that the early Christian martyrs frequently amazed their persecutors hy the indifference they exhibited under • the torture of the stake, and that such apparent immunity from suffering waß ascribed by the theologians to the direct interposition of heayen. We know for a fact that firemen fighting the flames in the exercise of their perilous office seldom feel the injuries they receive from proximity to intense heat until after the excitement generated by the event has cooled down. And from this and other facts within our knowledge, we have, while reading the accounts of the recent terrible hush fires which from day to day have appeared in the Auckland papers, and in which, we learn, many lives were sacrificed, derived a comforting belief that those victims who were overtaken while striving to save their .belongings did not suffer anything like the agony W© usually associate with such a tragic end, Something <?f the ardour and

excitement of battle enters into a strnerele with a bush fire. The flames darting among the trees like fiery serpent s under c-iver of a sullen pall of smoke suggests to the imagination a living and malignant enemy to thwart whose savage onslaught heart with joy and indifference to wounds and death. Those who have been engaged tell us that the fiercest, heat and most terrible burns have been disregarded for hours under the . influence of ah excitement that deadened physical self - consciousness. But the extraordinary • ascendency .sie Tihind ’gains over, the fiesli when we are brought face to face with the King of Death in his most awful aspects opens a field for speculation upon which we must refrain from entering at present. We are satisfied that:if those who met In Australia and Tasmania such a terrible end in the recent bush fires devastating those colonies 5 we are satisfied that if they could return t.o life the probability is that their testimony would establish the fact that death by fire was not less a euthanasia than death by drowning, It is the terrible suffering accompanying recovery from burns that- has earned for death by fire the dreaded character it bears,