‘A Thousand-Mile W alk 
me with so good an excuse for doing what I 
knew my mother would censure; for she made 
me promise I would not lie out of doors if I 
could possibly avoid it. The sun was set ere 
I was past the negroes’ huts and rice fields, 
and I arrived near the graves in the silent hour 
of the gloaming. 
I was very thirsty after walking so long in 
the muggy heat, a distance of three or four 
miles from the city, to get to this graveyard. 
A dull, sluggish, coffee-colored stream flows 
under the road just outside the graveyard gar- 
den park, from which I managed to get a drink 
after breaking a way down to the water through 
a dense fringe of bushes, daring the snakes and 
alligators in the dark. Thus refreshed I entered 
the weird and beautiful abode of the dead. 
All the avenue where I walked was in 
shadow, but an exposed tombstone frequently 
shone out in startling whiteness on either hand, 
and thickets of sparkleberry bushes gleamed 
like heaps of crystals. Not a breath of air moved 
the gray moss, and the great black arms of the 
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