contrary, she
turned a little pale,--but smiled brightly and said,--Yes, with
pleasure, but she must walk towards her school.--She went for her
bonnet.--The old gentleman opposite followed her with his eyes, and
said he wished he was a young fellow. Presently she came down,
looking very pretty in her half-mourning bonnet, and carrying a
school-book in her hand.]

MY FIRST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.

This is the shortest way,--she said, as we came to a corner.--Then
we won't take it,--said I.--The schoolmistress laughed a little,
and said she was ten minutes early, so she could go round.

We walked under Mr. Paddock's row of English elms. The gray
squirrels were out looking for their breakfasts, and one of them
came toward us in light, soft, intermittent leaps, until he was
close to the rail of the burial-ground. He was on a grave with a
broad blue-slate-stone at its head, and a shrub growing on it. The
stone said this was the grave of a young man who was the son of an
Honorable gentleman, and who died a hundred years ago and more.
--Oh, yes, DIED,--with a small triangular mark in one breast, and
another smaller opposite, in his back, where another young man's
rapier had slid through his body; and so he lay down out there on
the Common, and was found cold the next morning, with the
night-dews and the death-dews mingled on his forehead.

Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave,--said I.--His bones
lie where his body was laid so long ago, and where the stone says
they lie,--which is more than can be said of most of the tenants of
this and several other burial-grounds.

[The most accursed act of Vandalism ever committed within my
knowledge was the uprooting of the ancient gravestones in three at
least of our city burialgrounds, and one at least just outside the
city, and planting them in rows to suit the taste for symmetry of
the perpetrators. Many years ago, when this disgraceful process
was going on under my eyes, I addressed an indignant remonstrance
to a leading journal. I suppose it was deficient in literary
elegance, or too warm in its language; for no notice was taken of
it, and the hyena-horror was allowed to complete itself in the face
of daylight. I have never got over it. The bones of my own
ancestors, being entombed, lie beneath their own tablet; but the
upright stones have been shuffled about like chessmen, and nothing
short of the Day of Judgment will tell whose dust lies beneath a