Francis Hopkinson Smith

“ As for me, I confess I could not escape a certain hesitation in approaching the holy place. Dared I ask for a permit to set up an easel before the Poet's Corner, a place made sacred by the "congregated bones of the great men of all times"? ”

“ The discovery produced an oasis, the women shrinking back, the men crowding together, the oblong slab covering the ashes of the man that the world loved free for a moment from the polluting touch of irreverent feet. ”

“ In China off goes your head if you prowl through certain graveyards; in Mecca it is certain death for an unbeliever to enter the shrine; in Stamboul you must either shed your shoes and slip your polluting toes into a purified Mohammedan flop-about, or you are whirled out as no better than a dog. ”

“ Outside the office I found the verger who had acted as guide—a patient, long-suffering, expectant verger. He, too, needed repairs; more especially about his pockets, which required relining. The sexton was also waiting. He took up his position near the door by which I left the church. He, too, was suffering, and so was the head beadle, who wore a gown and a silver chain around his neck, and who could easily have been taken for the wine man in a restaurant. ”

“ Peter's, and other sacred buildings enshrining the dust of the great one wanders around at will, looking over the shoulders of kneeling penitents, their breviaries in their hands, or striding across the graves of the sanctified dead, whose names and titles and often whose Coats of Arms are worn into illegibility by the tramping multitude. ”

“ Sanctuary and the ceremonies that followed, "to lie in the small graveyard under Rochester Castle wall, or in the little churches of Cobham or Shorne; but all these were found to be closed; and the desire of the Dean and Chapter of Rochester to lay him in their Cathedral had been entertained, when the Dean of Westminster's request, and the considerate kindness of his generous assurance that there should be only such ceremonial as would strictly obey all injunctions of privacy, made it a grateful duty to accept that offer. The spot already had been chosen by the Dean ”

“ I can hear, too, the tones of the author's voice as I listened to him in New York on that snowy night in December, 1867, when, to quote his letter to his daughter, "there were at nine o'clock in the morning, 3000 people in waiting and they had begun to assemble in the bitter cold as early as two o'clock in the morning." ”