We passed to a spot where a gay party was leaning on a railing. A young woman had plucked some of the gayest flowers from the enclosure, and was laughing with her merry companions. As we approached, she threw the bouquet already soiled and torn, on the grave; and they went their way with some idle jest upon their lips. The widow paused, and struggled to suppress her emotion.
“Did you know the tenant of this grave?”
“From his childhood. He loved that woman, and struggled to acquire wealth to make her happy. He succeeded, and when she discovered that he was completely within her toils, she deceived and left him hopeless. There are men whose hearts retain the simplicity of childhood through life; and such was his. Without reproaching her, or breathing her name to any one, he suddenly shrunk as a blighted plant, and withered day by day, until he died. Like the fabled statuary, he was enamored of the creature his own mind had fashioned, and in the credulity of his nature, he made her wealthy, trusting that time would infuse truth and vitality into the unreal vision of his youthful imagination. The world of love is a paradise of shadows! The man beside her is now her husband; the wealth they revel in, this grave bequeathed them.”
“The fool! to die heart-broken—for a dream. But great men have at times died broken-hearted. I should not call him fool. It is a common death among good men.”
“Great men! But women, sir, have pined away to death.”
“In poetry, the bill of mortality is a long one; in real life the patients seldom die, unless they chance to be both vain and poor. Did a rich widow ever grieve to death for the loss of the noblest husband? Wealth is a potent antidote to the malady, and teaches resignation; while poverty, with the first blow of his iron sledge, will make his cold anvil smoke with the heart’s blood, for he is buried who for years had withstood the blow.”
“That woman did not cast nettles on his grave.”
“No nettles, but faded roses which she tore from it—blooming when she came there. Better cast stones and nettles than those withered flowers. Your boy has escaped this poor man’s destiny—the worst of deaths! His was the happiest! he died—smiling—on his fond mother’s bosom! But there is a grave around which weeds grow more luxuriantly, than about the sepulchre where mortal dust reposes. Daily watchfulness is required to prevent the bright creations therein buried, from being so over-run until nothing is seen to designate the beautiful tomb, where we had carefully embalmed them, as if in amber.”
“What grave, sir, do you refer to?”
“The human mind. A mighty grave wherein we daily bury crushed hopes and brilliant ephemerons, too fragile to survive the chill atmosphere of a solitary day. Keep the weeds from growing there and smothering their memories. They are the progeny of the soul, and should not be allowed to perish. Shall the joyous and beautiful creations of childhood be forgotten in age; must the noble aspirations of the vigor of manhood pass away without even an epitaph, because crushed in their vigor! Rather contemplate them hourly; plant flowers beside them, though they bloom but briefly and fade, they will send forth perfume even in decay, and inevitably revive in due season, bearing refreshing fruit; and old age, with palsied hand, will readily gather up the long account of his stewardship, and as he glances over the lengthened scroll that must become a record in the archives of eternity, may rejoice that he hath not been an ingrate and idler in the heat of the harvest-field, but hath diligently labored to make the entrusted talent yield the expected usage. Tear up the weeds that are incessantly growing there, ere he who was placed little lower than the angels, becomes an empty cenotaph—a stranger’s grave—mouldering and mingling with his mother earth unheeded and unknown.”