might look in, along in the
evenin'. Come, Mary!"

Mary, very sweet in her plain dress and white kerchief, was talking
with young Marden, her husband for the day; but she turned about
contentedly.

"Yes, gran'ther," said she, without a look behind, "I'm coming!"

THE END OF ALL LIVING

The First Church of Tiverton stands on a hill, whence it overlooks the
little village, with one or two pine-shaded neighborhoods beyond, and,
when the air is clear, a thin blue line of upland delusively like the
sea. Set thus austerely aloft, it seems now a survival of the day when
men used to go to meeting gun in hand, and when one stayed, a lookout by
the door, to watch and listen. But this the present dwellers do not
remember. Conceding not a sigh to the holy and strenuous past, they
lament--and the more as they grow older--the stiff climb up the hill,
albeit to rest in so sweet a sanctuary at the top. For it is sweet
indeed. A soft little wind seems always to be stirring there, on summer
Sundays a messenger of good. It runs whispering about, and wafts in all
sorts of odors: honey of the milk-weed and wild rose, and a Christmas
tang of the evergreens just below. It carries away something,
too--scents calculated to bewilder the thrift-hunting bee: sometimes a
whiff of peppermint from an old lady's pew, but oftener the breath of
musk and southernwood, gathered in ancient gardens, and borne up here
to embroider the preacher's drowsy homilies, and remind us, when we
faint, of the keen savor of righteousness.

Here in the church do we congregate from week to week; but behind it, on
a sloping hillside, is the last home of us all, the old burying-ground,
overrun with a briery tangle, and relieved by Nature's sweet and cunning
hand from the severe decorum set ordinarily about the dead. Our very
faithlessness has made it fair. There was a time when we were a little
ashamed of it. We regarded it with affection, indeed, but affection of
the sort accorded some rusty relative who has lain too supine in the rut
of years. Thus, with growing ambition came, in due course, the project
of a new burying-ground. This we dignified, even in common speech; it
was always grandly "the Cemetery." While it lay unrealized in the
distance, the home of our forbears fell into neglect, and Nature marched
in, according to her lavishness, and adorned what we ignored. The white
alder crept farther and farther from its bounds; tansy and wild rose
rioted in p