I should like to see
the gravestones which have been disturbed all removed, and the
ground levelled, leaving the flat tombstones; epitaphs were never
famous for truth, but the old reproach of "Here LIES" never had
such a wholesale illustration as in these outraged burial-places,
where the stone does lie above, and the bones do not lie beneath.]
Stop before we turn away, and breathe a woman's sigh over poor
Benjamin's dust. Love killed him, I think. Twenty years old, and
out there fighting another young fellow on the Common, in the cool
of that old July evening;--yes, there must have been love at the
bottom of it.
The schoolmistress dropped a rosebud she had in her hand, through
the rails, upon the grave of Benjamin Woodbridge. That was all her
comment upon what I told her.--How women love Love! said I;--but
she did not speak.
We came opposite the head of a place or court running eastward from
the main street.--Look down there,--I said,--My friend the
Professor lived in that house at the left hand, next the further
corner, for years and years. He died out of it, the other day.--
Died?--said the schoolmistress.--Certainly,--said I.--We die out of
houses, just as we die out of our bodies. A commercial smash kills
a hundred men's houses for them, as a railroad crash kills their
mortal frames and drives out the immortal tenants. Men sicken of
houses until at last they quit them, as the soul leaves its body
when it is tired of its infirmities.
Pages:
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274