Withered Leaves from Memory's Garland. Abigail Stanley Hanna
of many comforts to these poor people; and even now seems to come the well remembered "tell your mother I am much obliged to her," from the pale lips that lie buried beneath the sod. The daughter is buried by her side, and methinks they sleep as sweetly as the more wealthy citizen, beneath a more splendid monument. All here meet upon a common level--the old, the young, the rich, the poor, the bond and free, for death is no respecter of persons.
Here, too, rests a young physician, who supplied the place of the old one. His career was like the meteor flash, emitting its brilliant rays for a season, and then was shrouded in death's dark night.
As we stand upon this spot and contemplate it as it was when we last stood upon it, we feel that here has been the greatest change of any place yet visited. Here we meet many a name familiar to the ear, and a form familiar to the eye starts into life, and treads again its mazy scenes. Many monuments are erected to entire strangers, and this is our first meeting with them. Here the infant of a few days lies buried, just tasting the cup of life, he turned sickening away, and yielding it up, soared away with the angel band to the realms of bliss.
But ere we leave the yard, let us visit the resting place of the beautiful Clarinda Robinson, who died at the early age of nineteen. She had ever enjoyed undiminished health. But soon, oh, how soon, the rose of health faded upon her cheek; her sparkling eye lost its lustre, and the animated form, stiffened in death, was laid away in its silent chamber. At her feet lie two beautiful nieces, called, too, in the morning of their days to go and make their beds with her. Sadly did the bereaved mother mourn their loss; but the pale messenger came for her too, in a few weary years, and she joined them in the pale realms of shade.
Here, too, sleeps the young wife, called soon away from the husband of her youth. Consumption, like a worm in the bud, preyed upon the damask of her cheek, dried up the fountain of her life, and bore her triumphantly, another victim of his power. The old sexton, too, who from time immemorial, had been
"The maker of the dead man's bed,"
has laid down his mattock and his spade, and filled a grave prepared by other hands. At his feet lies a lovely daughter, snatched suddenly away, ere the bloom of youth had passed, and almost without a moment's warning, leaving a husband and a dear little child, too young to feel its loss.
But while we have yet lingered, the sun has finished his journey, and hid his bright beams behind the curtain of the west, and already have the shadows of coming twilight gathered around us, and the white marble slabs, dimly seen in its shadows, assume strange, mysterious shapes, and seem almost like moving things of life, while the darker slate are lost to view.
We will sit a moment on the grave of our dear old aunt. This was the spot designated for our family burying place; but it is now filled with strangers. We will now leave this spot, to toss again upon the waves of time; but may the lesson here learned go with us, and prepare us for the day when the heart and flesh shall fail, and we must change this for another life, ever remembering,
"That life is long that answers life's great end."
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