THE GARDENS OF THE DEAD 



else was time-worn (as the wall was polished by several 

 generations of backs), faced the graveyard. If you sat on 

 this bench you might take a glance at a man's life there 

 in one long look, for there was a mill near by, and an Inn, 

 and a shoemaker's, and a forge — the blacksmith was the 

 undertaker, too, any one could see from the fact that he 

 was making a coffin. Besides these you could see moun- 

 tains covered with snow and wreathed in clouds ; great 

 stretches of country, a wood, and the river. What more 

 can there be, saving only a sight of the sea ? 



But what struck me most forcibly was the appearance 

 of the graveyard, for each grave had flowers growing by 

 it, and a little weeping willow planted to hang over it, 

 and there was something so pleasant to me in this that I 

 was filled with delight of the place as I sat there. It was 

 a real garden, so fresh and bright with flowers and with 

 ugly bead-wreaths as are so usual in foreign countries, 

 and now, alas ! in our own. And it was so homely to 

 think of the elders of that place who sat looking at the 

 graves and meditating — very likely — on the spot where 

 they themselves would lie. I remembered then, as I sat 

 there, the description of the graveyard in David Copper- 

 field, and the words came almost exact into my head. 



" One Sunday night my mother reads to Peggotty and 

 me in there, how Lazarus was raised from the dead. 

 And I am so frightened that they are afterwards obliged 

 to take me out of bed, and show me the quiet churchyard 

 out of the bedroom window, with the dead all lying in 

 their graves at rest, below the solemn moon. 



" There is nothing half so green that I know anywhere 

 as the grass of that churchyard ; nothing half so shady 

 as its trees ; nothing half so quiet as its tombstones. The 

 sheep are feeding there, when I kneel up, early in the 

 morning, in my little bed in a closet within my mother's 

 room, to look out at it ; and I see the red light shining on 



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