Cemetery Ridge

“ A sad and picturesque sight it was; from eighty to a hundred people in all, some in sleighs, some ploding through the snow on foot,—aged women in their white blankets, mothers with their children, some of them in bright scarlet shawls, boys and girls, all in their Sunday attire. Through the silent forest we wended our way till we came at length to the wild little cemetery with its rude snake fence encircling it. The coffin was taken from the sleigh and carefully lowered into the grave; then the men took off their hats and we sang another hymn. ”

“ When I entered the gateway, I was struck with surprise and admiration. Though destitute of trees, the cemetery is certainly more deserving, from its peculiarly novel and unique appearance, of the attention of strangers, than (with the exception of that at New-Haven, and Mount Auburn,) any other in the United States. From the entrance to the opposite side through the centre of the grave-yard, a broad avenue or street extends nearly an eighth of a mile in length; and on either side of this are innumerable isolated tombs, of all sizes, shapes, and descriptions, built above ground. ”

“ Âtma drew breath more freely when they were through the city gates, and the bearers stepped out more quickly over hard stretches of sand and waste hillocks set with thorn and caper bushes toward the little cemetery which the musician had chosen. A few gnarled jhand trees decked with coloured snippets of cloth tied there by many mourners, a few nameless roly-poly concrete graves, a sprinkling of tiny turrets showing where someone was laid--someone whose resting place was unknown to all save the women who came thither every week to mourn--marked the spot. ”

“ A mile down this road, growing more and more obscure with those rising and falling apparitions or the shapeless and rugged heaps terrible in their helpless inertia by hedge and fence, arose the cemetery hill. ”

“ Separated from the race-course by a narrow bamboo-edged road is the Happy Valley Cemetery—an acre of beauty sacred to the eternal sleep of dead Europeans. I know of no other cemetery so beautiful in all our world. ”

“ But in the distance, a mile away, the national flag waving invitingly bids reassurance. At length you stand at the entrance of the cemetery, entering through the strong iron gates of the thick ivy-covered brick wall, 12,782 known and 923 unknown men are buried within.
Many things at once interest you. Walks lead to every part of the grounds. Trees, shrubbery and flowers enhance the natural beauty of the place. Feathered songers of the South chant daily requiems. Each grave is marked by a white marble headstone, on which is generally carved the number, rank, name and state of the dead soldier. ”

“ The coffins ordered were of the best. Some economical citizens suggested that they buy an acre of marsh land by the river, which could be had for a few dollars, but they declared that [Pg 245] the remains should be placed in dry ground. The lifeless clay reposes now far out of the reach of the deadly waters which go suddenly down the Conemaugh Valley. It is a pretty spot, this cemetery, and one that a poet would choose for a resting place. Mountains well wooded are on every hand; no black factory smoke defaces the sky line. ”

“ The graves are neatly bordered with grass, and planted with flowers, and many of the crosses have withered wreathes hanging upon them. In summer it is a beautiful place; in fact, the very name of cemetery in German—Friedhuf or Court of Peace—takes away the idea of death; the beautiful figure of the youth, with his inverted torch, makes one think of the grave only us a place of repose. ”

“ They were not in the old graveyard by the river, but in a new cemetery that had been opened on a slope above the village. It was a bare, stony place; shrubs that had been planted had not grown. In the corner where they untie it, except little by little, in a lifetime, or in generations of lives! ”

“ People’s faces grew as wizened as the skins of old apples; throats and lungs were choked by the grey dust, which whirled through the streets, and made breathing an effort.
In the outlying cemetery it was still bleaker than in the shelter of the houses. Over this stretch of ground the wind swept as over the surface of a sea. The grave-diggers related the extraordinary difficulty they had had in digging the grave; the earth that had been thrown up lay cracked into huge, frozen lumps. ”

“ The earth was rapidly shoveled into the opening, and in a short time a mound of yellow clay marked the old skinflint's last abode. It was unlike other newly-made graves, however, for a rope reached out of it to the bell near by, and six inches of an air-pipe protruded.
The grave-diggers left the spot, and returned to their homes. The cemetery was deserted unless one believes that the spirits of the dead hover above the last resting place of their bodies. ”

“ A long way below this curious landmark of the hills, lies the cemetery, one of the most beautiful spots in Saint Pierre. It has been made so by a great deal of work, for so solid is the barren rock here that each grave has had to be blasted out with charge after charge of dynamite. But in the end each grave is surrounded by a wooden coping surmounted at one end by a wooden cross painted black or white. The coping is filled in with earth sifted from the debris of the blasts or brought from a distance. ”

“ I do not want to see tombs—not your tombs. Why should I? We have graves of our own, our family has. Why my uncle Podger has a tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery, that is the pride of all that country-side; and my grandfather's vault at Bow is capable of accommodating eight visitors, while my great-aunt Susan has a brick grave in Finchley Churchyard, with a headstone with a coffee-pot sort of thing in bas-relief upon it, and a six-inch best white stone coping all the way round, that cost pounds. When I want graves, it is to those places that I go and revel. ”

“ A poignant silence hovered there, and the whole cemetery seemed filled with the dark reverie of the dead. Poignant feelings were re-experienced deliciously and painfully.
Nowhere does the soil feel so near to one as in a graveyard—it is the sacred soil of repose. They walked quietly, the whole ten of them, one after another, and felt the coolness and the softness of the ground under their bare feet. They passed near a grave. ”

“ And so the inhabitants turn out en masse, and march with slow steps, for about half a mile, to the cemetery. It is a dark, silent stream of people, filling the street, and carrying everything slowly before it; the only sounds being the chanting of the choir, and the repetition of prayers. We 42follow to the cemetery, which is crowded with graves, each headed by little iron or wooden crosses, hung with immortelles. The procession divides and disperses down the narrow paths, a few only of the friends of the deceased standing near the grave. ”

“ A whitewashed picket-fence encloses a square space of near fifty acres, divided into four main sections by two avenues crossing it and cutting each other at right angles. Two of these sections—those south of the east-and-west road—are subdivided by alleys into five smaller sections, where the dead lie in long, silent rows, by hundreds. Here are about seven thousand graves. The northeast quarter of the cemetery is undivided; and here, in a single vast encampment, sleep five thousand men. ”

“ The place of the dead is almost a gayer-looking spot than the ordinary haunts of Parisian life. It is traversed with shady walks of elms and limes, and its inmates lie amidst thickets of ornamental shrubs and plantations of the most gaudy flowers. Their monuments are hung with wreaths of artificial flowers, or of those natural ones which do not lose their color and shape in drying, like the amaranth and the ever-lasting. Parts of the cemetery seem like a city in miniature ”

“ Two steps away there is the cemetery, which is hardly growing, since nearly all those who die now are not anywhere.
I lift my eyes and take in the whole spectacle together. The hill which rises in front of me is full of people. It trembles like a swarm of bees. Up above, on the avenue of trimmed limetrees, it is crowned by the sunshine and by the red platform, which scintillates with the richness of dresses and uniforms and musical instruments. ”

“ The Moorish cemetery close by, is a most melancholy, nay, frightfully grotesque picture. No white-shining tombs and dome-topped mausoleums, no dark cypresses waving over them and contrasting shade with light, which mournfully adorn the cemeteries of the north coast. All is the grotesque refuse of misery! Here we see sticks of palm-branches driven down at the head of the graves, which sticks are driven through old bottles, pitchers, jugs, ostrich eggs, &c., so that at a distance the burying-ground has the appearance of a dull, dirty, desolate field of household rubbish, and old crockery-ware. ”

“ It is more remarkable as being, so far as I can find, the one solitary instance of an allegorical gravestone among the thousands of gravestones in the vast and carefully guarded burial-place in the City Road. Strictly speaking, death's heads and crossbones are allegorical, but these must be excepted for their very abundance and their lack of novelty. Possibly, also, the lichen, damp, and London climate, which have obliterated many of the inscriptions in this old cemetery, may have been fatal to the low relief which is requisite for figure work of the kind under consideration. ”

“ The mountaineer's companion spoke again half to himself; "I wish that my dear ones had a resting place like that. In the crowded city cemetery the ground is always shaken by the tramping of funeral professions." He buried his face in his hands.
For some time the stranger sat thus, while his host spoke no word. Then lifting his head, the man looked away over the ridges just touched with the lingering light, and the valley below wrapped in the shadowy mists. ”

“ But last year our retired farmers organized a good roads association, and to amuse themselves they have dragged the roads for miles around and have built a mile of rock road leading south to the cemetery—where in the old April days, as Henry Snyder says, the deceased was buried once, but the mourners got buried twice—going out and coming back. ”

“ The Cemetery lies embosomed in a sunny opening of the rocks below the Hermitage, where nature and art combined—the former predominating so much by means of a noble amphitheatre of rocks—have given to the spot a quiet, pleasing interest. Outside the Cemetery, a winding path leads to the High Rocks, the road to which the inhabitants have recently improved. ”

“ The rooms and conservatories of the house are filled with luxurious plants, soon to be set out on the graves of this cemetery. Beauty and silence reign through this domain of the dead. There is a hush in the air, and a hush in the heart, as you walk through it, reading its names, pausing by the graves of its “unknown,” thinking of the past. Far as the sight reaches, stretch the long columns of immortal dead. The beauty of their sleeping-place, the reverent care covering it everywhere, tells how dear to the Nation’s heart is the dust of its heroes, how sacred the spot where they lie. ”

“ A large part of the northeastern bank of the Schuylkill adjoining the Park is the Laurel Hill Cemetery. Its winding walks and terraced slopes and ravines give constantly varying landscapes, making it one of the most beautiful burial-places in existence. ”

“ Of the frontier cemeteries whose dead came to their ends, shod in accordance with the grim phrase of their times, there remains one just outside the town of Tombstone to the north. Here straggling mesquite bushes grow on the summit of the ridge; cacti and ocatilla sprawl over the sun-baked earth hiding between their thorny stems the headboards and the long narrow heaps of stones which no man could mistake. Some of these headboards still bear traces of black-lettered epitaphs which tell how death came to strong men in the full flush of youth. ”

“ When we come to the end of the road, we see no tombs. There are paths winding in several directions, round projecting ridges and shoulders of powdered rock, but one might pass through here and not know he was in a cemetery. Above the rubbish here and there we see, when they are pointed out, holes in the rock. ”

“ Hence we find in the sandpit broad roads, admitting the use of horses or carts, and these roads well rounded off at the corners for the facility of passing to and fro; whereas the paths of the cemetery cross one another at right angles, that so every part of their walls may be available for purposes of sepulture, whilst they are so narrow that two men can scarcely walk abreast in them. ”

“ But as far as my experience goes, I have found that the people who chiefly object to the conversion of burial-grounds into gardens are those who stay at home. They have in their mind’s eye a picture of a well-kept cemetery, where burials take place every day, or of a sweet village churchyard, where the grass is soft and green and the graves are peaceful and undisturbed. One of the last things that I should ever wish to see is a village churchyard turned into the village recreation ground ”

“ As soon as the hack was out of sight, we returned to the highway, and, after a brisk walk, we reached the graveyard.
[Pg 162]
CHAPTER V.
The resting places of the dead are localities which I do not much care to visit in the night. In the day time it is different; there is a holy calm about a cemetery then which impresses me with a feeling of rest, and I can really enjoy an hour or two in quiet contemplation of the monuments and humble head-stones of a large burial ground. ”

“ Alas! it was my mother's ambition to erect just such a stone as was put over Demoustier's resting-place; but she could not afford to consecrate the dead at the cost of the living.
I fancy I must have acquired my partiality for cemeteries, that is to say village cemeteries, from my frequent walks with my mother to the Villers-Cotterets cemetery: nothing impresses me so much even now—their churches, their tall weeping willows, their broken-off columns, and their crosses painted black, with a simple white inscription stating the name and the age of the deceased. ”