The Bolivar bulletin. [volume] (Bolivar, Hardeman County, Tenn.) 1865-1888, 1883-11-15

thought YOU were never to hear again.
This is the set with which you are
now most familiar at your birthplace.
This is where you are most at home.
Every lot holds an old acquaintance.
Materially YOU do not see them, but the
grave-stones are here sticking out like
visiting-cards left at the door, and on
each the name and date of their last APP
pearance-
Can it be that so many Of these peo-
pie who passed away during your boy
hood were no olderP Forty, fOrty-five,
fifty. You had at that time held them
rs old men. Why, they were no older
than you are-some not so old when
they died! Have you, indeed, arrived
at that period held so venerable in your
boyhcOd? Here is the grave of a man
deemed by you. or what was to you
many years ago, to be patriarch. He
was a deacon and a General Gen
eral Of the militia, aud a gorgeous spec
tacle on general training" DAYS at the
head of an army of rusty ununiformed
militia, bearing rusty fiint-lOcks. And
only forty-eight when he died.
The silent company here assembled
represent different eras of your life
Here are the girls-those first girls. OF
course there have been many girls since
some possibly as much if not more
dangerous to your peace of mind OF
these here-some you knew only in the
pinafOre and school-day stage-yet
there have been none exactly like them
since. Some are lying by the side of
their husbands and with them their
children. Some died long after the
bloom and sparkle of their school-day
youth had given place to the careworn
and sallowed face of maturity-but here
and for you they are yOung-and so
best it is
The village main street was once alive
with all these people. They came to.
their shops and stores in he morning
after breakfast; they passed up again
to dinner and down afterwards, and
then to tea. They congregated and
gOssiped at chosen resorts at night,
and censured their neighbors out of
hearing a good deal and praised very
little, and made invidious remarks on
somebody's style of living, and Won
dered where the money came from, and
wondered how much the last dead man
had left his relatives, and whether an
other had any property at all, and how
4 another one was doing, and how mean
/ and close this man, and how extrava-
/ giant was that one.
/ But what of that? They were but
/ human. So are you. You love them
all nOw-or rather their memories.
/ You could wish them all back. True,
4 pretty near the same village life goes on
here to-day. The same eating and
drinking and sleeping and waking and
marrying and getting unmarried and
living and dying and carping and fault
finding. But it's TO you not exactly the
same as that of the long ago.
And then on Sundays and week nj ghts
fbnNr want "a obr1ra1 anh Gonna cfpO1
up and prayed long prayers and awed
you very much by their severity of man
ner and language, and impressed you
with an idea that the Deity they called
upon was a being much more to be
feared than loved.
One by one have they disappeared
and come to this place-the husband.
the wife, the maiden sister of many
winters, the town ways and the little
busy, rusty man who kept the book
store and bought your broken glass at
a cent pound and paid you in pens
and picture books, and who did not
know n joke in capital letters. Here
lies the great man of the village, who
: owned ships and prayed copiously at
prayer-meetings, and was n being that
no boy dared to speak to. Here lies the
man in bad repute, whom you knew and
. felt so to be by the manner in which
; your parents had called his name. Here
lies the man whose voice in the street
was a below, and the man you never
recollect hearing speak u loud word,
Z and the awful swearer and the hard
drinker, and the brisk, dapper man of
danditied and sporting tendencies, and
{ also the last relic of the old school gen
tleman and federal aristocracy whom
} YOU can Just recOllect, and whose pre-
4 &
r place was in striking contrast with the
carelessness OF more modern demeanOr.
Here they lie, once rich, once poor
/ once by the world called bad, called
good-an here equally silent, equally
rich, equally pOOr-equal in dust,
; though some be pressed down by
, pOnderous marble and others marked
, only by a carved red sand-stone-all
equal-so far as you know.
5 You must feel amused here as well as
! sad. Mark, says one epitaph, g the
end of the perfect man, - you know this
z ''perfect man" A good enough man
I as things goa small man in every re-
spect-whO kept a little candy shop,
| and feebly voiced the sentiments of his
| richer neighbors, and did nothing very
| good nor very bad, and lived cheaply,
7 and thought cheaply, and died cheaply
anu maui - l5AC III tAAN WIN
{ turbulent breakers.
I And the carved widows, weeping on
! carved tombstones under carved weep
ing willows! Can you, too, weep as
YOU remember those widows and call to
mind the peevish, dyspeptic husband
I they weep Over-the man whose en-
trance into the house was announced by
growl-who snapped before grace and
snarled after, because his potatoes were
$ not cooked to his liking-and whose
nual advent TO the land of shadows
brought a peace and quiet to that house
hold which it had never known before
5 and which lasted until the weeping wild
ow under the weeping willow chose an
other marital master and entered into 6
I renewal of connubial suffering and en-.
. durance-to end, perhaps, by the cree
I ton OF another marble weeping widow
5 under marble weeping willow?-M y
Graphic.