Wall, what a quiet, lovely spot that cemetery is, what a sweet place to rest in when our little life here is rounded by a sleep!
Over two hundred acres of graves—what glowin’ hopes and joys, what miseries and despairs found a rest here! Wealth and Poverty, Ambition and Love, all asleep.
Rothschild a-droppin’ his money bags as the sleep come on, as well as the baby who reposes under the simple stun marked—“Our Own Darling Baby.”
Hearts ached when he dropped to sleep.
The Countess Demidoff rests under the costly Mausoleum built above her. And Rachel, the great actress, wonderful creeter, how she moved the hearts of the world! But at last the curtain fell and she retired. No encore from friend or lover can call her before the World’s footlights agin—no, she has got through actin’; has gone from the Make-Believe into the Real.
Talma, too, has gone to sleep in that quiet place, and Béranger and Racine and Bernardin St. Pierre.
It seemed almost as though Paul and Virginia ort to be here by him.
And La Place and Arago. I wonder if they hain’t havin’ a good time up amongst the stars; I presoom they have discovered lots of new worlds—hosts of ’em. And General Massena, Marshal Davoust, and Marshal Ney, the bravest soldier. And Chopin, what music that man must have hearn by this time—more melogious than he ever dreamt on here!
And Alice wanted to visit the graves of Abelard and Heloise. They are restin’ under a canopy, havin’ got past all the tribulations that beset ’em here below.
Alice wanted to see ’em for Love’s sake—so I spoze. Poor creeters that thought so much of each other and seemed to be so clost to each other that nothin’ earthly could separate ’em, and then he a-dyin’ in a monastery and she a-passin’ away in a nunnery; separated in body, but united in sperit—so I spoze.