206 OUT-OF-TOWN PLACES. 



propriety of seeking for, or multiplying any solemn 

 symbols in connection with death, or the places 

 where the dead lie ; which believes in opening wide 

 and laughing landscapes around graves, and in smoth- 

 ering all memory of the short-lived, funeral black 

 under the gayest of colors. It seems to me, however, 

 that so far as such a philosophy puts its meddlesome 

 liveliness upon church-yards and tombs, it is only a 

 gay hypocrisy. Death is always death; and the 

 place where the dead lie, always Golgotha. The real 

 grief that goes thither with its bitterness, will be put 

 down by no pelting of bright colors, and mock grief 

 may be mended by what solemnity belongs to the 

 scene. 



We are not to go through the world mourning, it 

 is true ; but the graveyards, thank God, are only in 

 scattered places. And if we can spend liveliness and 

 cheer over all the rest of our ways, we can surely 

 afford to leave the funereal plumes hanging over the 

 one little path where we mourn. 



