We boys sometimes went through the yard to pick out the slabs we liked the best; these were always the tallest and the largest ones. We carefully read the inscriptions on these stones, and never for a moment doubted a word they said, any more than we doubted Holy Writ. All the inscriptions told of the virtues of the dead, and generally were helped out by a Scriptural text. In the case of children the stone was usually ornamented with a lamb or a dove, which we thought wonderful and fine. Sometimes an angel in the form of a woman was coming down from the clouds to take a happy child away to heaven. I cannot recall that I saw any angels in the forms of men, though why all the angels were women I did not know then, nor, for that matter, do I know now.
I think the first time my faith was shaken in anything I saw on a gravestone was one day when I chanced upon a brand-new slab erected to the memory of the town drunkard by his “loving wife and children.” The inscription said that the deceased was a kind and loving husband and a most indulgent father. Everyone in Farmington knew that the wife had often called in the constable to protect her from the husband; but still here was the stone. Yet, after all, the inscription may not have been untrue; indeed, it may have been more truthful than those that rested above many a man and woman who had lived and died without reproach.
Even in the churchyard we boys knew which were the favored spots. We understood that the broad thoroughfares where carriages could drive were taken by the richest people of the town, and that the mounds away off at one side and reached only by narrow footpaths were for the poorer and humbler folk. I always hoped I might be buried where the teams could pass; it seemed as if I should be lonely away on the outskirts where no one ever came along.
Even when quite young, I could not help noticing how many graves were at first planted with flowers and decked and kept with the greatest care, and how soon the rosebushes were broken and the weeds and grass grew rank and high upon the mound. Everyone thought this a shame; and I thought so too. But that is not so clear to me to-day as it was then. I have rather come to think it fortunate that Nature, through time and change, heals the sore wounds and dulls the cruel memories of the past.
When I had grown old enough to go to the Academy on the hill, we boys had a playground just at the edge of the graveyard. Sometimes the strongest hitter would knock the ball clear over to the newest mounds that were slowly encroaching on our domain. When it was my turn to chase the ball, I always got it as quickly as I could, and ran away, for even this momentary intrusion of the dead into our games left an uneasy feeling in my mind.
The last time I was in Farmington I once more went inside the old graveyard; somehow it had a nearer and more personal meaning to me than it ever had before. In those far-off days the churchyard was only a casual thought that flitted now and then like a shadow through my mind,—never with much personal relation to myself, but more in connection with my father or mother, or with some old neighbor whom I knew and loved; but I find that more and more, as we grow older, the thought of churchyards becomes familiar to our lives and brings a personal meaning of which childhood cannot know.
Farmington itself, when I last saw it, had not much changed except to grow older and more deserted than when I was young. Some of the shops and stores were vacant, and many of the people had gone to more prosperous towns; but the churchyard had grown larger with the passing years. The old part was well-nigh forgotten, but the new yard had stretched out until it quite covered the field where we used to chase the ball, and had then slowly crept off over a ravine farther back, and was climbing on up the hill. I wandered for a while around the winding paths, and read again the inscriptions on the leaning stones; these had a meaning that I never felt before. When I read the ages of the dead, I found many a stone that told of fewer years than those that I could boast, and in the newer part I spelled out the names of some of those little white-haired boys that once skipped along the winding path with me without the slightest thought that they so soon would be sleeping with the rest.
CHAPTER XII
CHILDHOOD SURROUNDINGS
The life of the child is not the life of the man, and the town of the child is not the town of the man.
I can never see Farmington except through my boyhood’s eyes, and no doubt the town and its people were not at all the same to the men and the women that they were to me. Every object meant one thing to them and quite a different thing to our childish minds. As I grew to boyhood, the mill-pond was only a place where I could fish and skate and swim, and the great turning wheel served only to divert my wondering eyes and ears as it kept up its noisy rounds. The old mill furnished us boys a place to hide and run and play our games. The whole scheme of things was ours, and was utilized by a boy’s varying needs to help fill up his life.