The Alleghanian. [volume] (Ebensburg, Pa.) 1859-1865, 1860-09-06

startled us as something strange and un-
natural. Here, where the physician has
seemed to us as a sort of elegant luxury.
an undertaken seems a monstrous anomaly,
How different is it in the city. There
mourners in their weeds, the somber ad-
vertisement of their sorrow, mingle every
where with the gay promenaders or busy
crowds of our streets-there in almost
every square one sees depending from the
door and window of some house the tell
tale crape-Death's mournful pennons
futtering in the wind. There, on MANY
a corner, one is confronted with the black,
slgnIhcantsign Of the undertaker's "dread-
tul trade, or comes upon some marble
yard, filled with ghostly assemblage of
antlcIpatory grave-stones and monuments
graceful broken columns, which are to
tyPefy the lovely incompleteness of some
young life, now full of beauty and promise
melancholy, dropping figures, types of
grief forever inconsolable, destined, per-
haps, to stand proxy for mourning Young
widows, now happy wives-sculptured
lambs, patiently waiting TO take their pla-
! ces above the graves of little children,
whom yet smiling mothers nightly lay to
sleep in soft cribs, without the thought of
deeper dark and silence of night not
far away, or Cf the dreary beds soon to be
prepared for their darlings, ~ the earth"
Then we make magnificent provision
for our dead. No cathe lral were vast
enough to shadow their rest We appro-
pirate acres of pleasant land, woods, riv-
er-banks, hills, and quiet glens, to the
| goodly company; and every year the 81
lent settlement widens and thickens.-
| Iombs, columns, lambs, mourning-fgures,
weeping willows, broken lilies, and rose
buds multiply. Soon every tree must
shade circle of graves; even now, the
! flowers on every bit of unbroken turf seem
to say to us-"We occupy till you come"
There sadly familiar vehicle is the
hearse, with its steeds and melancholy
cortege. Sometimes, while waiting at the
corner of street till the way should be
clear, we have INDUCED in pensive con-
lectures as to who or what was the still
occupant of the gloomy state-carriage in
which sooner or later we must all take q
place. Sometimes, when the coffin under
the waving plumes was small, I have
clasped closer my little daughters hand,
and quickly turned my eyes away-not
daring to glace into the mourning coach
! that followed, where perchance sata moth
er, in the awful sacredness of her sorrow :;
but ere the day was over, the incident
was forgotten. If it were not for the pow
er to throw off the sad impression of such
sights, and to narrow down our gent
lest sympathies to the little circle of i'm
mediate friends and acquaintanees, our
days at home would all pass like iuner-
al procession-death-k knells would deaden
our ears to the sweet home-music of life
ever would we ''smell the mould above
the rose"
In the country the simple ties of hui
man brotherhood are stronger. We take
home the startling lesson of our rneighbor' S
sudden death. In spirit, we sit down
with his stricken household, and put our
lips to their bitter cup, in sorrowful COM
munion. The mourning clothes of his
wife and children shadow our thoughts
his funeral knell saddens for US the sum.
mer air-our hearts echo the desolate
; sound of the earth descending on his cof-
fn-and at night, when we lay ourselves
down to sleep, we think of him in his low
ly bed, over which kindly Nature will
soon draw coverlet of daisies.