The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1893-10-24
WITH THE DEAD.
Tho Sights One Sees in q NeH
England Graveyard

GuS IS10O OIdSSy oI0s
There is good deal CT comfort to be gathered
from these little old scraps of poetry and
somehow, they seem TO stretch to suit a great
grief ard SHRINK to 81 4 small one Hawthorne
Graded among the loveliest of hills,
resting in their very center as in the
hollow of a hand, lies New England
graveyard with an unpretentious en-
trance-a time worn wooden gate, and
an earth roadway striking in unex-
pectedly from an old elm-lined street
Clustering about the gate, the spread
ing branches Of other elm trees screen
the roads destination, their small
leaves clothing yet not concealing the
strong boughs' outlines as diaphanous
robe might drape a graceful form. Near
the gateway stands rude shed, from
which the town hearse has been rolled
into the sunshine-for funeral to-day,
perhaps. The thought of a new grave
seems an impertinence among these
ancient tombs, as a new patent OF no
bility among those long ennobled. The
summer rains have softened and the
winter storms have beaten down the
mounds to a grass level. You may
walk among the worn headstones with
a lighter step, perhaps. but earth has
been earth too long to hold part sacred.
The grass has grown up long and thick.
You read that "Mrs. Thankful,
wife of Judah Dickson, died aged
twenty years, but your head must
lie as low as hers and you must
part a green veil of verdure before
learning that ''of four children she
alone survived infancy, and from in
fancy she was an orphan. To the SYM
pathy due to one thus early bereft of
near kindred and home she impaired
peculiar interest; for she was equally
amiable and intelligent"
All these stilted phrases and barely
twenty years old-only just wife.
perhaps! The minister of the village
wrote that epitaph, beyond a doubt.
But those two lines below, SO worn
that to deciphcr them you must trace
the letters with your finger, as the
blind read-who wrote these words OF
quaint pathos?
In ign ALI INC WOfiO iOtSOt OcSIVO
:. IT'S meet that remember still.
How pleasant to lie in the cool
grass with, tho warm sun shining
down from the warmer blue above,
and, with your chin propped on your
hands. vivid life without and within,
your blood quick in your veins. read
how another lived and breathed and
loved and ended, poor thing, a hundred
years ago!
The next stone stands so near that
youmay reach it without rising. The
feel of the earth is good. as the crawl
ing beasts of the field know. Move
forward as they, and part the yelling
grass to read Martha Pryor's message
to the world she left:
Reader;youa also shorty mutt ~,
Be ftripped Of life and turned to duff
Let the grass spring back. Martha
is not the gentle Thankful. You will
think of all this some day; yes, but not
at Martha's bidding, with its spice of
venom-not with the spell Of the joy of
living on youl
Move ON to that stone near which a
small, three-leaved, cIover-like plant
mods negative with you. shaking its
wind-swung head from side to side on
its slender stem.
"Sufa Ingraham" lies here-her
tombstone rough-hewn from the hills,
its back unfinished as the cutoff life
which the carven front tells of. The
stone has sunk sideways into the
ground, which adds to its look Of de-
crepitude. The inscription can be read.
but with difficulty:
The blooming cheek, the fp-
arkling eye From Deaths ar.
rest could not save me.
Youth and beauty
arc where the rest Of the inscription
is hid, doubtless. If under the mold
there "Sufa." as Martha, compares her
state with ours to be, kindly Mother
Nature has taken from her Martha's
privilege, and stopped her lips with
earth.
How denunciatory they are. these old
tombs-aggressively warning in their
cry of doom!
Daniel Roswell. from under his
carvern urn, draped with a switch of
dropping willow, sternly sounds his
note of warning:
Vain man, thy fond pursuits forbear,
Repent! thy end is nigh. )
Death at the fCrthest cant be far,
think-betore thou die!
And Elijah Warner. brooded over by
a watchful cherub, impossible and
dreary. with eyes bullying from their
sockets, tells of his too early death in
the same awful voice:
Youth. cans. thou needless viez
TIE relics Of the dead:
O think: beneath your feet
There lies your own likeness
And then, most awful,
Elisha Grey End.
Wto quit this oufSy
Stage1n the sl;h. yeef
OF his age, " hich
was on Octr IS, I17c
Ny children dear, this place draw near
A Fathers grave you fec;
Not long ago was With you
And foon yo0-l be with me
There Is in all these note of ghoul-
ish desire TO bring the warm and living
to the cold dead, and "soon you'll Be
with me-" rings with it creepingly. II
rouses . spirit Of revolt You turn
away sharply to stone little apart
from the rest, set on grassy hillside
sweet, short grass. green and soothing
TO the eye and touch. This is 8 doubl
stone. ''Antel Bolton" lies here: be-
side him. Jane. his wife. STOPPING, you
read this beneath his name:
Tscder we're bis feelings.
The Christian Was his frie-d
Honest were his dealings
And peace.u. vas his en1
And beneath her name:
The beneficence 0. her heart. tie df,;gecce o:
-. a-rAS thA Mons tnGnAzns 0f ssv naA a-d