292 
RURAL HOURS. 
the same principle, may deny decent burial to a brother. It may 
see useless expense in the shroud, waste of wood in the coffin, 
usurpation of soil in the narrow cell of the deceased. There is, 
indeed, a moral principle connected with the protection of the 
grave, which, if given up, must ineritably recoil upon the society 
by whom it has been abandoned. 
The character of a place of burial, the consideration or neglect 
it receives, the nature of the attention bestowed on it, are all in- 
timately connected with the state of the public mind on many 
important subjects. There is very little danger in this countrj’^ of 
superstitions connected with the grave. What peril there is lies 
on the other side. Is there no tendency to a cold and chilling in- 
difference upon such subjects among our people? And yet a 
just consideration of Death is one of the highest lessons that 
every man needs to learn. Christianity, wdth the pure wdsdom of 
Tmth, while it shields us on one hand from abject, cowardly fear, 
on the other hand is ever warning us alike against brutal indif- 
ference, or the confidence of blind presumption. With all the 
calmness of Faith, with all the lowliness of Humility, with all the 
tenderness of Charity, and with the undying light of heavenly 
Hope at her heart, the Christian Church sits w'atching beside the 
graves of her children. 
The oldest tomb belonging to the good people of this little 
town lies within the bounds of the Episcopal Church-yard, and 
bears the date of 1792. It was a child who died of the small- 
pox. Close at hand is another stone bearing a date two years 
later, and marking the grave of the first adult who fell among 
the little band of colonists, a young man droAvned while bathing 
m the lake — infancy and youth w'ere buried before old age. At 
