As to Poganuc, all whom we knew there have passed away; all the Town-Hill aristocracy and the laboring farmers of the outskirts have gone, one by one, to the peaceful sleep of the Poganuc graveyard. There was laid the powdered head, stately form, and keen blue eye of Colonel Davenport; there came in time the once active brain and ready tongue of Judge Belcher; there, the bright eyes and genial smile of Judge Gridley; there, the stalwart form of Tim Hawkins, the gray, worn frame of Zeph Higgins. Even Hiel's cheery face and vigorous arm had its time of waxing old and passing away, and was borne in to lie quiet under the daisies. The pastor and his wife sleep there peacefully with their folded flock around them.
"Kinsman and townsman are laid side by side,
Yet none have saluted, and none have replied."
A village of white stones stands the only witness of the persons of our story. Even the old meeting-house is dissolved and gone.
Generation passeth, generation cometh, saith the wise man, but the earth abideth forever. The hills of Poganuc are still beautiful in their summer woodland dress. The Poganuc river still winds at their feet with gentle murmur. The lake, in its steel-blue girdle of pines, still reflects the heavens as a mirror; its silent forest shores are full of life and wooded beauty. The elms that overarch the streets of the central village have spread their branches wider, and form a beautiful walk where other feet than those we wot of are treading. As other daisies have sprung in the meadows, and other bobolinks and bluebirds sing in the tree-tops, so other men and women have replaced those here written of, and the story of life still goes on from day to day among the Poganuc People.
The End.
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