Eyes and No Eyes: A New Version

THE CONTRIBUTORS’ CLUB.

MY daily walk, for many months of the year, leads me through an old graveyard in the heart of a city, but isolated there-from by a tall brick wall, whose whitewashed surface time has beneficently toned to a mottled dinginess that soothes the eye, while here and there a wandering honeysuckle lends its drapery to break the stiffness of the boundary lines.

These boundary lines inclose a spot of small extent, which the eye easily takes in at a glance. Small though it is, there still is room for many a tenant more, so little space suffices when at last we are at rest. Yet rarely do I come upon a fresh grave in one or another of the little squares, intersected by the narrow walks that divide the ground with the geometrical regularity of a chessboard. For there is a fashion that rules in cemeteries, it would seem, as in boulevards, and far away, without the corporation limits, another city of the dead, vast and populous and growing, invites burial; a place of ambitious monuments and well-kept grounds, but lacking the poetic charm of this little neglected rus in urbe, with half its space, an open sunny lawn, free from dust and crowds and jarring sounds, though the streets are at the very gates, — a place, truly, in which to " loaf and invite one’s soul.”

When the first tenant was laid here, beneath a stone now so weather-worn that its record can no longer be read, this burial-place too was “ out of town; ” but the drive that led up to its archway of brick, on the side facing the town, long since became a street lined with houses, and at last extended itself beyond the gateway on the opposite side ; and the way from gate to gate, between the graves and across the open lawn, has come to be a thoroughfare for pedestrians all day long, and perhaps by night as well, for I do not know that the great, rusty, wrought-iron gates are ever locked, neither is there ever a keeper on parade: the sanctity of the spot is its safeguard.

The whole inclosure lies open to the sunshine, for there are not many trees, and none of them are large enough to cast a gloomy shade. Here sing the birds, with only a brick wall between them and the hostile street; and here Dame Partlet, escaped from a neighboring yard, leads her brood complacently about the unfenced mounds, guarded only by the mantling turf.

I cannot resist a fancy that these unfenced graves are the happiest. An iron railing is at best an ugly thing, but the tall, stiff, wooden paling, too often seen encompassing a little family of graves, is the most melancholy feature a cemetery has to offer, giving its small inclosure an air of isolation that chills the heart. Against this uncompromising barrier Nature, that takes kindly thought of forgotten graves, protests with mantling vines, and sturdy growth of shrubs, and plentiful rosemary, “ for remembrance.” But because the growth is so shut in, and circumscribed, and unwinnowed by the winds of heaven, the vines lose their grace in a conglomerate tangle, and the wild rose grows stiffly upright, after the pattern of the sentinel palings. If there be violets or pale narcissi, freighting the air with a fragrant thought of spring, they must bloom unseen amid the jungle.

Not thus does the great mother deal with those unfenced beds of rest where she may work her untrammeled will. Here, in early spring, the flower that children know as “ Moses in the bulrushes ” sets great clusters of heavenly blue, and the bramble, that poetic vagrant, trails its garlands of “satin-threaded flowers ; ” here, through the arid summer days, “ bouncing Bet ” maintains her constant bloom; here golden-rod and purple asters nod in the autumn wind; and when all these are gone, the plumy broomsedge and the ghost-like life-everlasting fill out the measure of the year’s watch above the couch that knows no dreaming.

It is my pleasure, sometimes, to carry away with me, as from a friend’s garden, a handful of blossoms ; for though none of my kindred rest here, nor even any whom I have met in life’s pilgrimage, I do not feel myself an alien in this silent company ; neither do I feel that I wrong the dead when I pluck a flower that Nature has planted upon some grass-grown grave or beside some forgotten tomb, for earth’s embrace makes us all of one brotherhood.

To enter here, upon my daily round, is to me like stepping aside into a great cathedral, where I may forget for a moment the fret and the hurry of life, and where I seem to realize in some intangible way the expression of the Psalmist, “ free among the dead.” Yet to most who find it convenient to pass through, this place of graves is, I doubt not, rather a grim memento mori than a reminder of the heavenly rest. Few, indeed, have I ever met straying from the direct and beaten path that leads from gate to gate between the ranks of graves and across the stretch of open lawn. There needs no better indication that the cemetery invites no loitering than the singleness of aim that characterizes this pathway through the grass : straight to the gate it goes, and across the green, untrodden lawn there is no other. Whether the cares of this world render them impervious to the sweet and solemn influence of the place, whether “ use doth breed a habit ” of indifference, or whether a superstitious dread pursues them, the hurrying wayfarers look neither to right nor left, nor pause upon their way, and to stand aside and watch them is like looking on at a procession in an unreal world.

Once as I went along the street leading to the western gate, I was hailed from the opposite side by a woman in black, to me unknown, who besought me eagerly, if I were “ going through,” to let her accompany me ; “ for,” said she, “ I’m so mortal terrified to walk alone among graves.”

As it was broad daylight of a sunny April morning, I perceived that it would be superfluous to combat her fears, and I consented to her company, with the remark that the old cemetery was a pleasant place for a walk.

“ Not to me, — not to me,” she reiterated, shudderingly. “ I would not go through upon any account, even with company, if I was n’t obliged to take the nearest way. I’ve just learned that old Miss Blank is dying. Ever heard of her ? She’s been bedridden for years, and nobody ever did know precisely what was her complaint; mighty queer symptoms. I never met her myself, but she used to live neighbor to my cousin Joe’s sister-in law, and so I thought I might claim admittance to her deathbed. Death-beds are mighty interesting occasions, and I would n’t for anything, miss this one.”

The dandelion was in the grass and the bloom was on the brier, yet this woman, hurrying with a ghoul-like eagerness to witness the agonies of dissolution, shuddered at the sight of graves where spring was renewing the emblems of the resurrection from the dead.