1866-11-09 Letter: Jones to Coolidge, 2021.021.010

J. Pringle Jones, Trustee of the Charles Evans Cemy, Reading, Pa.

Nov. 9. 1866

Austin J. Coolidge, Esquire.

33 School Street. Boston.

My dear Sir

I have just received and read your very interesting and obliging letter in reply to my queries and have to thank you, I cannot say^howfully and sincerely, for its abundant information and for the extreme kindness and promptness you have shown in giving that information. Your letter may be considered

upon this middle ground, it is managed neither way, it is simply, "crop or pile," whether it shall live or die, go up or go down. Instructed by the good example of your company, an effort shall not be wanting to make this corporation what it ought to be, and, if that effort succeeds, the corporation will be ever the grateful debtor to your courteous kindness.

If my good [genius? genies?] ever leads me again to Boston, I feel that I am so much your obliged servant as that in duty, not less than in pleasure, I shall be bound to make your personal acquaintance.

Very respectfully

J. Princes Jones. Reading. 9 Nov. '66.

as making the date of the new foundation of the Charles Evans Cemetery, for it and its' accompanying documents point out precisely how such a corporation ought to be conducted. Our Board has gone on blindly, running the cemetery, so to say, upon its present [reb..?], without any wise or just consideration of the time to come and of its' needs. You will smile when I tell you that our maximum prince per square foot is nine cents, our minimum six, and that we charge less for digging a grave than it costs us to dig it by from thirty to fifty percent. For myself, I must say that I have been in the board but about two years: the observation of those two years, however, has satis-

fied me that the day will come, and not very remotely, when the corporation will become bankrupt, if its' whole system be not changed and made conformable to that which prevails at Mount Auburn.

I do not mean to flatter your local pride, but I have always had, and expressed, the idea that Boston is the true centre of American civilization. The farther we get from Boston the ruder, the coarser, the more careless, the more indifferent to all high and true principles of private and public action do the people become. With you a corporation is generally administered to the best possible advantage -- at the far south to the most possible advantage -- with us.