How lovely that afternoon drive! It was the day after those terrific storms and gales, the final “conjunction,” probably, and there was an untold charm in everything. As we drove leisurely along, gathering flowers to press for “Summer Gleanings,” we thought of our friends who were speeding their way back to New York just at the time when the country is loveliest, and knew they were envying us. Still, somehow it did not seem as if we were traveling, but only going to drive as we had been doing all summer. Perhaps we missed the July heat and dust!
“Still as Sunday” gives no idea of the quiet of Stow. It seemed as if one might live forever there, and perhaps one could, if permitted, for just as we were leaving the hotel for a little stroll, our landlady was saying to some “patent medicine man,” “We don’t have any rheumatism here, nobody ever dies, but when they get old they are shot.”
We had not walked far before we came to a cemetery, and, remembering the landlady’s remark, we went in to read the inscriptions. No allusion was made to shooting, but if it was a familiar custom the omission is not strange. We noted a few epitaphs which interested us:
“When I pass by, with grief I see
My loving mate was taken from me.
Taken by him who hath a right
To call for me when he sees fit.”
“A wife so true there are but few,
And difficult to find,
A wife more just and true to trust,