But Marie, with frowning brows, rejected this offer. “No!” she said, “if her now-I-lay-me part got lost out of Paradise, she could come right here and find her old self in her home. If the box was moved, she would be lost everywhere!”
And she went back alone, and I looked and saw her pat the grave gently, and heard her say: “My peshous Dinah!”
Life’s Aftermath
Life’s Aftermath
“The grave of all things hath its violet.”
It was in mellow, many-hued October. It was a Sunday—sunny and still. There was the feel of Sunday in the air. Three years had passed since the Great Soldier’s prayer, “Let us have peace!” had been answered with blesséd acquiescence. But when, for any reason, the people came together in a crowd, it was sad to see how many still wore mourning. And when the wearer was old or middle-aged, there was something in the deadly composure of manner that said as plain as words: “This will be my garb as long as life shall last!”
One woman there was who watched with envious eye those who passed her wearing “deep mourning.” Envious, because she was herself denied the sad satisfaction of this outward expression of her great grief. Her husband—her dearer self—had simply abhorred the custom—the “social bondage,” as he called it—of mourning! The wrapping up of the strained and shaken body in black garments, and then the shutting out of every breath of pure air, every ray of God’s sunlight with yards on yards of the most hideous product of the manufacturing world—black crêpe—was, he declared, detrimental to good health when worn willingly, and when worn unwillingly, it was hypocrisy as vulgar as it was cruel. And he had exacted a solemn promise from her, that in the approaching hour of her loss, she would wear no crêpe at all, and black only for the briefest possible time; a concession made to save her from the wondering and satirical comments of her friends and neighbors.