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A few of the mounds had stained moldering tomb-stones at their heads. He looked at these first; and finding only strange names on them, turned next to the mounds marked out by cross-boards of wood.
I blush to acknowledge the thoughtless frolic with which, in company with other whipsters, I have sported within its sacred bounds during the intervals of worship; chasing butterflies, plucking wild flowers, or vying with each other who could leap over the tallest tomb-stones, until checked by the stern voice of the sexton. The congregation was, in those days, of a really rural character.
The depolarized and bewildered Damocles found himself in a strange and truly foreign land, a queer, cold, dismal country inhabited by vast quantities of "second-class sahibs," as he termed the British lower middle-class and poor, a country of a strange greenness and orderedness, where there were white servants, strangely conjoined rows of houses in the villages, dangerous-looking fires inside the houses, a kind of tomb-stones on all house-tops, strange horse-drawn vehicles, butlerless and ghari -less sahibs, and an utter absence of "natives," sepoys, byle-gharies, camels, monkeys, kites, squirrels, bulbuls, minahs, mongooses, palm-trees, and temples.
As I strolled along I glanced at the inscriptions on the various tomb-stones, and endeavoured to derive from them some notion of the lives and characters of those whose memories they perpetuated. "Sacred to the memory of Erasmus Gunning, twenty-seven years Schoolmaster of this Parish. Born 24th of March, 1806, and rested from his labours on September the 19th, 1876."
Such monuments are cenotaphs indeed; founded far away from the true body of the fame of the hero; who, if he be truly a hero, must still be linked with the living interests of his race; for the true fame is something free, easy, social, and companionable. They are but tomb-stones, that commemorate his death, but celebrate not his Me.
"Be quiet, please, and sit down; it was still enough before you came in." "So I should think, from the way you all look like tomb-stones. Nobody looks peaceful, but Jean, and she's asleep; and Olive is the only one that looks natural, because she always looks solemn and cross, no matter what's up." Olive turned from the window with a jerk.
"They are not at all like idols, mother; they are the most noble conceptions of the human form." How could they look human? He himself had told her they were made out of marble; just such marble, she supposed, as was used for tomb-stones. "I only wish you could see some of the statues in Italy; the Laocoon, Niobe, and others I have seen.
One of these mounds has been used for many years as the grave-yard, and to-day we saw attenuated cows lying against the marble tomb-stones, chewing their cud in contentment, after a meal of corn furnished by General York. Here, as below, the remarkable skill of the women and girls in the management of the smaller pirogues was noticed.
As we sat on one of the tomb-stones, he recounted to me the exploits of many of these worthies; and my heart smote me, when I heard of their great doings in days of yore, to think how heedlessly I had once sported over their graves. From the church, the venerable Diedrich proceeded in his researches up the Hollow. The genius of the place seemed to hail its future historian.
A thrill of horror even now goes through me as I think of that night; the white tomb-stones stood forth among the foliage, by which they were surrounded, like sheeted ghosts, and the waving leaves gave them the appearance of weird shapes in fantastic motion.
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