Wheat and Huckleberries Part 16

SOME BITS OF POETRY

Aunt Katharine's maid of all work did not outstay her leave of absence, and at evening of the third day Esther came home to her grandfather's.

She insisted that she had had a good time, and strongly resented being regarded as a martyr who had sacrificed herself to a painful cause.

"Why, Aunt Katharine made it delightful for me," she said, "and I liked her better and better all the time I stayed."

"I hope she didn't win you over to all her notions, especially that prejudice against getting married," said Stella, with a laugh.

"She certainly didn't argue me out of the belief that life might be worth living if one happened to stay single," returned Esther, and though she said it lightly, the look in her eyes was sober.

But they did not talk long of Aunt Katharine. There was something of livelier interest to be discussed now. It had been the plan from the first that sometime during the summer they should visit Boston with Stella. The summer was wearing away, and it was time for the plan to mature. Moreover, a letter had come from a cousin, who had a cottage for the season at Nahant, inviting them all to spend a week with her there.

Kate was in raptures, and Stella was mapping out a fortnight's touring which should include a circuit of pleasures, Boston and the seash.o.r.e, with Concord and Cambridge, and perhaps Old Plymouth, thrown in. It was all delightful to think of. For the next few days their minds were full of it, and in the midst came that pleasant trip which had been planned with Mr. Philip Hadley.

He was punctual to his engagement, and appeared early on the appointed afternoon. But he was not on horseback now. He was in a stylish top buggy, behind a pair of high-stepping bays. Ruel Saxon had planned to take the two girls with him in the family carriage-Kate had other plans for the afternoon-but Mr. Hadley's buggy changed all that.

"If one of the young ladies will ride with me I shall be delighted," he said, glancing with a smile at Esther, who happened to be the only one of them in the room at the moment.

She returned the smile, then turning to her grandfather, settled the arrangement in just the right way. "Grandfather," she said, "we must let Stella go with Mr. Hadley. That will be nice for them both, and then you and I will go together. I don't want to be selfish, but I shan't be here much longer, you know, and must make the most of my chances for riding with you."

The old gentleman looked gratified, and Mr. Hadley smiled again. As for Stella, there was no doubt of her satisfaction with the arrangement when she came in a minute later. She was looking exceedingly stylish in a pale green dress, with hat and parasol to match, and quite the figure to sit with Mr. Hadley behind those handsome bays.

It was a perfect afternoon, and a light rain the night before had laid the dust in the country roads. It was the least frequented of them all, a track which was hardly more than a cart-path which led by the old Bridgewood place, and they tied their horses to a rail fence and climbed on foot to the top of the sharp knoll on which the house once had stood.

There was no trace of it now. The walls on which their eccentric owner had once hung his verses in the wind had long ago dropped away, and the very stones of its foundation had been removed out of their place.

Even the tree which had been part of his "battery"-if indeed it survived the experience-could not be distinguished now in the thick grove of maple and chestnut and birch which covered the place. Only the view from the hilltop remained unchanged, and this, as Stella declared, sitting breathless at the end of the climb, justified the owner's choice of a dwelling-spot, and must have inspired his muse.

From there to the old burying-ground was by a winding way, for Ruel Saxon was in historic mood, and guided his party past the lake haunted by the memory of conjuring Jane, who had been drowned there as a witch long, long ago; past the meadow where a little party of the early settlers, busy with making hay one summer afternoon, had fallen victims to the tomahawks of the Indians; and past the rock where Whitefield, shut out from the churches, had preached one Sabbath day to a crowd of spell-bound and weeping people.

Sometimes he drew Dobbin to the side of the road, and giving the buggy s.p.a.ce beside him, paused while he set out the event which the scene called up with vivid description and trenchant comment. He was no mean chaperon in guiding others over the track of the past, and this afternoon he was at his best.

The old burying-ground lay on the edge of a pine wood, on the outskirts of the village. It was more than half a century since the sod had been disturbed, and gra.s.s and daisies possessed the paths which once lay plain between mounds which years had smoothed to almost the common level. There had been no encroachment of a growing town upon its borders to break its quiet with the noise and hurry of a strenuous life. It lay, an utter quietness, in the beauty of the summer afternoon, a spot in which it was impossible not to feel that a great peace must have infolded those whose bodies had mouldered to dust in its tranquil keeping.

Yet perhaps Esther was the only one of the little company who felt the pensive influence of the place, and she had never stood before in an old New England burying-ground. Even she did not keep it long, for Ruel Saxon was full of a bustling eagerness to find the graves they had come to seek, and the quaintness of the mortuary devices and inscriptions on the low gray stones soon claimed her whole attention.

"Your great-great-grandfather made up a good many of these epitaphs,"

observed the old gentleman to Mr. Hadley. "He was a wonderful hand for that. Folks were always going to him when their relations died-those that wanted anything except verses of scripture under the names. Here's his own grave now!" he exclaimed, pausing in his rapid searching, and not a little pleased with himself that he had so quickly found a spot which he had not seen in many years:-

"'Sacred to the memory of JABEZ BRIDGEWOOD.

Born Aug. 1, 1735-died Nov. 12, 1810.'

"That's his stone, and no mistake."

Mr. Hadley was bending over it now. Below the inscription which the old man had read were four lines which the creeping moss had almost obliterated. He took a knife from his pocket and sc.r.a.ped a few words.

"Ah," he said, lifting his head, "there is evidently one he didn't write:-

"'Oh Friends, seek not his merits to disclose, Nor draw his frailties from their dread abode, (There they alike in trembling hope repose) The bosom of his Father and his G.o.d.'"

"No," said Ruel Saxon, who did not recognize the slightly changed familiar lines, "he didn't write that. But he picked it out, and left word in writing to have it put on his stone. I remember hearing my grandfather talk about it. Some folks thought 'twas queer he didn't write his own epitaph. It always tickled him so when he got a chance to do it for other folks."

"Poor man," said Mr. Hadley, with a smile, "it was probably his only chance of publication. Think what that must have meant to him! But I'm glad he recognized a superior poet. It's a mark of greatness."

They separated a little now, moving about among the headstones, and reading, as they could, the old inscriptions. Some of them were provocative of an amus.e.m.e.nt which must have its way even in this hallowed spot.

There was one which ran:-

"Here lies, cut down like unripe fruit, Ye son of Mr. Jonas Boot, And Mrs. Jemima Boot his wife named Jonathan."

"I rather hope my ancestor didn't write that," said Mr. Hadley. Then, noting the date of the said Jonathan's death, 1748, he added, with a shake of his head, "But he might; it's possible, if his poetic genius blossomed early."

There was another close by which Stella was reading now. It was inscribed to a girl of sixteen:-

"Too good for earth, G.o.d in His love, Took her to dwell with saints above."

"Poor little thing!" she said, under her breath. "I wonder if she liked living with the saints half as well as with her own girl friends. It's to be hoped that she found some there."

There was dignity in one over which Esther was bending now:-

"Let not ye dead forgotten lye, Lest men forget that they must die;"

and a touch of real tenderness was in the one which stood beside it under the name of a little child:-

"She faltered by the wayside, And the angels took her home."

But this, which came next, was not so felicitous:-

"G.o.d took him to His Heavenly home, No more this weary world to roam."

This, to a babe of six months, certainly indicated a paucity of rhymes on the part of the composer, and Mr. Hadley pointed in triumph to a year marked on the little gray slab which plainly antedated his ancestor.

But the stone which by the consent of all was p.r.o.nounced the most unique was inscribed to Keziah, a "beloved wife who put on immortality" at the age of thirty-five. Below the name and date was carved an emblem suggestive of a chrysalis, with the words, "Keziah as she was;" and under this appeared the head of a cherub, with the wings of a b.u.t.terfly sprouting from its swollen cheeks, and the words, "Keziah as she is."

Stella hovered around this for some time in convulsed admiration. "I'm so glad there were artists as well as poets in those days," she said; and then she added, with a levity she could not repress, "it reminds one for all the world of the advertis.e.m.e.nts, 'Before and after taking.'"

There was another erected to the memory of a wife which called forth almost as much admiration. The virtues of the deceased were set forth with unusual fulness, and the record of her long services to society, the church, and her family, ended with the words, "She lived with her husband sixty years, and died in the hope of a better life."

Even Deacon Saxon chuckled over this, and then added, "I don't b'lieve my sister Katharine ever heard of that, or she'd have thrown it up to me before this."

It was queer what oddities of thought and expression had got themselves cut in some of these stones, and there were commonplaces which occurred over and over:-

"Friends nor physicians could not save This loving --"

Was father, mother, husband, the needed t.i.tle? Alas, all were easily supplied, and then followed the inevitable "from the grave."

There was one with a harsh creditor accent, before which light-hearted readers could hardly help shrinking a little:-

"Death is a debt to Nature due, I've paid it now, and so must you."