Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
After lingering for some time near the resting place of the dear ones of my own family, I turned away and threaded my way thoughtfully back. During another visit to the neighbourhood of my birth, after having tea with the Rev. H , Rector of , I took a stroll through the graveyard that nearly surrounds the old church, and spent some time in reading the inscriptions on the headstones.
The Imp finds this a relishing and piquing pursuit; firstly, because their resting-place is announced to be sacred; and secondly, because the tall headstones are sufficiently like themselves, on their beat in the dark, to justify the delicious fancy that they are hurt when hit. Mr. Datchery hails with him: 'Halloa, Winks!
Like a little clown in her curling cotton suit, her lumpy shoes, her idiotic hat, she will offer her tears to the pitiless silence of trees, wind, rain and white stones. "Do you like them there?" She asks. She points to a cluster of fancy headstones. "Do you?" I ask. She smiles. "Oh yes," she says. And she stops. She is admiring the tombstones. We walk on. It is incredible.
Tilda's face is grave, however, as she stands there in the morning sunshine. She is looking back upon the enclosure where the white stones overtop the bluebells. They are headstones, and mark the cemetery where Miss Sally, not ordinarily given to sentiment, has a fancy for interring her favourite dogs.
Jonah was explaining that he must see Clara all the way home on account of the lateness of the hour, when he was astonished to hear someone sobbing in the monumental mason's yard as if his heart would break. He turned and looked. The headstones and white marble crosses stood in rows with a faint resemblance to a graveyard; the moonlight fell clear and cold on these monuments awaiting a purchaser.
But the stone walls enclosing that ancient cemetery had been kept in good repair, and there were no weeds within, nor toppling headstones. It looked cold and gray and desolate, like all the cemeteries of Brittany, but it was made hideous neither by tawdry gewgaws nor the license of time. And sometimes it was close to a picture of beauty.
"Here above the enterprise of the modern town rises this hill, bearing the very presence of its founders," where you forget for a time the lure of the woods and sea as you reverently pause to read the inscriptions on the mossy headstones. The oldest marked grave is that of Governor Bradford. It is an obelisk a little more than eight feet in height.
It was so still, so unutterably peaceful, in the hallowed enclosure, where the green grass grew tangled among the grey headstones that elbowed each other in the cramped space. During the week the little churchyard was deserted.
There, leaning against the headstones all around, were many standing looking over the broad and placid sea, and turned to the soft salt air which blew on their hot eyes and rigid faces; for no one spoke of all that number.
Sandstone was rarely employed, for though easily carved, it as easily yielded to New England frosts and storms. A hard, dark, flinty slate-stone from North Wales was commonly used, a stone so hard and so enduring that when our modern granite and marble monuments are crumbled in the dust I believe these old slate headstones still will speak their warning words of many centuries.
Word Of The Day