Shall I tell you how long months and years dragged wearily on? how Lucy saw through her husband’s mask of hypocrisy and self-conceit? how to indifference succeeded disgust? how Harry Graham returned from Europe, with a fair young English bride? how Lucy grew nervous and hysterical? how Ezekiel soon wearied of his sick wife, and left her in one of those tombs for the wretched, an insane hospital? and how she wasted, day by day—then died, with only a hired nurse to close those weary blue eyes?
In a quiet corner of the old churchyard where Lucy sleeps, a silver-haired old man, each night at dew-fall, paces to and fro, with remorseless tread, as if by that weary vigil he would fain atone to the unconscious sleeper, for turning her sweet young life to bitterness.
FRANCES SARGEANT OSGOOD.
“I’m passing through the eternal gates,
Ere June’s sweet roses blow.”
So sang the dying poetess. The “eternal gates” have closed upon her. Those dark, soul-lit eyes beam upon us no more. “June” has come again, with its “sweet roses,” its birds, its zephyrs, its flowers and fragrance. It is such a day as her passionate heart would have reveled in—a day of Eden-like freshness and beauty. I will gather some fair, sweet flowers, and visit her grave.
“Show me Mrs. Fanny Osgood’s monument, please,” said I to the rough gardener, who was spading the turf in Mount Auburn.
“In Orange Avenue, Ma’am,” he replied, respectfully indicating, with a wave of the hand, the path I was to pursue.
Tears started to my eyes, as I trod reverently down the quiet path. The little birds she loved so well, were skimming confidingly and joyously along before me, and singing as merrily as if my heart echoed back their gleeful songs.