Thus let it be continued throughout coming generations forever. Each year this auction shall be held to dispose of the dust remaining in one-hundred-year-old sepulchers."
These suggestions found favor in the eyes of the Trust who proceeded at once to take the necessary steps to incorporate these regulations into the laws of the commonwealth. The laborers stoutly opposed the adoption of these partial measures, but they were powerless because the Trust bribed enough of the legislators to carry their point.
All this happened many centuries ago, so that when I was there I saw the full program of one of these spectral auctions and was chilled with horror at the proceedings.
Every year this peculiar auction is held at each soil center. The wealthy are able to redeem their sepulchers, but the poor, having no soil, cannot satisfy the law; so the dust of their ancestors must be sold. Laborers are sent out to open the one-hundred-year-old sepulchers along the diamond ridges and carry the coffins to one place. Here they are publicly opened and the bones and dust
