I.
All the journeyings I had ever
done had been purely in the way of business. The pleasant May
weather suggested a novelty namely, a trip for pure recreation, the
bread-and-butter element left out. The Reverend said he would go,
too; a good man, one of the best of men, although a clergyman. By
eleven at night we were in New Haven and on board the New York
boat. We bought our tickets, and then went wandering around here
and there, in the solid comfort of being free and idle, and of
putting distance between ourselves and the mails and
telegraphs.
After a while I went to my
stateroom and undressed, but the night was too enticing for bed. We
were moving down the bay now, and it was pleasant to stand at the
window and take the cool night breeze and watch the gliding lights
on shore. Presently, two elderly men sat down under that window and
began a conversation. Their talk was properly no business of mine,
yet I was feeling friendly toward the world and willing to be
entertained. I soon gathered that they were brothers, that they
were from a small Connecticut village, and that the matter in hand
concerned the cemetery. Said one:
“Now, John, we talked it all over
amongst ourselves, and this is what we’ve done. You see, everybody
was a-movin’ from the old buryin’- ground, and our folks was ’most
about left to theirselves, as you may say. They was crowded, too,
as you know; lot wa’n’t big enough in the first place; and last
year, when Seth’s wife died, we couldn’t hardly tuck her in. She
sort o’ overlaid Deacon Shorb’s lot, and he soured on her, so to
speak, and on the rest of us, too. So we talked it over, and I was
for a lay out in the new simitery on the hill. They wa’n’t
unwilling, if it was cheap. Well, the two best and biggest plots
was No. 8 and No. 9—both of a size; nice
comfortable room for
twenty-six—twenty-six full-growns, that is; but you reckon in
children and other shorts, and strike an average, and I should say
you might lay in thirty, or maybe thirty-two or three, pretty
genteel—no crowdin’ to signify.”
“That’s a plenty, William. Which
one did you buy?”
“Well, I’m a-comin’ to that,
John. You see, No. 8 was thirteen dollars, No. 9 fourteen—”
“I see. So’s’t you took No.
8.”
