A CURIOUS DREAM. 



195 



music. Ah, it was worth ten years of a man's life to be dead then ! Everything 

 was pleasant. I was in a good neighborhood, for all the dead people that lived near 

 me belonged to the best families in the city. Our posterity appeared to think the 

 world of us. They kept our graves in the very best condition ; the fences were 

 always in faultless repair, head-boards were kept painted or whitewashed, and were 

 replaced with new ones as soon as they began to look rusty or decayed ; monuments 

 were kept upright, railings intact and bright, the rosebushes and shrubbery trimmed, 

 trained, and free from blemish, the walks clean and smooth and gravelled. But 

 that day is gone by. Our descendants have forgotten us. My grandson lives in a 

 stately house built with money made by these old hands of mine, and I sleep in a 

 neglected grave with invading vermin that gnaw my shroud to build them nests 



withal ! I and friends that lie with me founded and secured the prosperity of this 

 fine city, and the stately bantling of our loves leaves us to rot in a dilapidated 

 cemetery which neighbors curse and strangers scoff at. See the difference between 

 the old time and this — for instance: Our graves are all caved in, now; our head- 

 boards have rotted away and tumbled down; our railings reel this way and that 

 with one foot in the air, after a fashiori of unseemly levity ; our monuments lean 

 wearily, and our gravestones bow their heads discouraged; there be no adornments 

 any more — no roses, nor shrubs, nor gravelled walks, nor anything that is a comfort 

 to the eye; and even the paintless old board fence that did make a show of holding 



