As we still lingered on the banks of the sleeping river we recalled these lines from Emerson: "My home stands in lowland with limited outlook, and on the outskirts of the village. But I go with my friend to the shore of our little river, and with one stroke of the paddle I leave the village politics and personalities behind and pass into a delicate realm of sunset and moonlight." Alert and watchful still stood the figure near the bridge, and as we turned away from this quiet spot "his attitude of eternal vigilance still seemed prophetic." He became at once the noble spirit of a brave Anglo-Saxon, standing for Freedom and Right; the spirit that gained our independence; that of 1867 that freed the slave; and that of 1917 that sent the sons of America across the ocean. This glorious Freeman should be placed on some lofty mountain peak in the pure, free air of heaven, where all might read the lesson of Freedom and Human Rights. This is one of America's shrines of which she may be duly proud. Could the European tourist carry back no other memory, it would be well to cross the Atlantic to see this sight. Leaving the guardian at the bridge standing there, we made our way to Sleepy Hollow.
We are not particularly fond of cemeteries, but the knowledge that finally one has to go there himself makes a visit not wholly purposeless. We strolled past. the quiet homes to the more quiet plot of ground, "hallowed by many congenial and great souls." Here on a lofty elevation of ground stood the headstones of Louise May Alcott, Thoreau and Charming, with that of Hawthorne enclosed by a fence and withdrawn a short distance.
"What a constellation of stars, whose radiance shall shine on undimmed through countless centuries!"
Here is what Thoreau wrote concerning monuments: "When the stone is a light one and stands upright, pointing to the sky, it does not repress the spirits of the traveler to meditate by it; but these men did seem a little heathenish to us; and so are all large monuments over men's bodies from the Pyramids down."
A monument should at least be "starry-pointing," to indicate whither the spirit has gone, and not prostrate like the body it has deserted. There have been some nations who could do nothing but construct tombs, and these are the only traces they have left. They are the heathen. But why these stones so upright and emphatic like exclamation points? What was there so remarkable that lived? Why should the monument be so much more enduring than the fame which it is designed to commemorate—a stone to a bone? "Here lies ___" Why do they not sometimes write, "There rises?" Is it a monument to the body only that is intended? "Having ended the term of his natural life." Would it not be truer to say, "Having ended the term of his unnatural life?" The rarest quality in an epitaph is truth. If any character is given it should be as severely true as the decision of judges, and not the partial testimony of friends. Friends and contemporaries should supply only the name and date, and leave it to posterity to write the epitaph.
OPPOSITE THE OLD SHORE ROAD
The Old World bended low beneath a load
Of bigotry and superstitions dark,
When Liberty, amid the tottering thrones
Of despots born, with gladness filled the homes
Of men, e'en the Eternal City bade
Her gates imperial open wide; and, like
A cloud the darkness lifted from the land.
Then Freedom's gentle, buoyant spirit, like
The Magi's wand, extended far across
The sea, and thereupon the gloomy flood
Was parted wide asunder, and revealed
A glorious paradise for Freedom's sons.
Columbia, beneath thy banner's stars,
The mind of man in rare luxuriance blooms,
Unfolding one by one the attributes
Of deity. In vision we foresee
The perfect man. In form the image of
His Maker, God. In toleration filled
With charity for all. In Reason's Ways
Profound. In thought, he mounts the throne of power
And sways the world. He tries frolic Nature's grasp
To lure her secrets still untold till we,
Amazed at his bold course, recoil abashed.
—Willis Boughton.