Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave,--said I.--His bones
lie where his body was laid so long ago, and where the stone says
they lie,--which is more than can be said of most of the tenants of
this and several other burial-grounds.
[The most accursed act of Vandalism ever committed within my
knowledge was the uprooting of the ancient gravestones in three at
least of our city burialgrounds, and one at least just outside the
city, and planting them in rows to suit the taste for symmetry of
the perpetrators. Many years ago, when this disgraceful process
was going on under my eyes, I addressed an indignant remonstrance
to a leading journal. I suppose it was deficient in literary
elegance, or too warm in its language; for no notice was taken of
it, and the hyena-horror was allowed to complete itself in the face
of daylight. I have never got over it. The bones of my own
ancestors, being entombed, lie beneath their own tablet; but the
upright stones have been shuffled about like chessmen, and nothing
short of the Day of Judgment will tell whose dust lies beneath any
of those records, meant by affection to mark one small spot as
sacred to some cherished memory. Shame! shame! shame!--that is all
I can say. It was on public thoroughfares, under the eye of
authority, that this infamy was enacted. The red Indians would
have known better; the selectmen of an African kraal-village would
have had more respect for their ancestors.
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