tempts of the mother to drive back tears, compose
fluttering lips, and steady the tones of her usually cheerful voice.
For several days previous, Mr. Hargrove had been quite indisposed,
and as his nephew would leave home at eleven p.m., the customary
Sunday night service had been omitted.

As the afternoon wore away, the family trio assembled on the shaded
end of the north verandah, and with intuitive delicacy, Regina shrank
from intruding on the final interview which appeared so sacred.

Followed by Hero, she went through the shrubbery, and down a walk
bordered with ancient cedars, which led to a small gate that opened
into the adjoining churchyard.

In accordance with a custom long since fallen hopelessly into
desuetude, but prevailing when the venerable church was erected, it
had been placed in the centre of a spacious square, every yard of
which had subsequently become hallowed as the last resting-place of
families who had passed away, since the lofty spire rose like a huge
golden finger pointing heavenward. An avenue of noble elms led from
the iron gate to the broad stone steps; and on either side and
behind the church swelled the lines of mounds, some white with
marble, some green with turf, now and then a heap of mossy
shells--not a few gay with flowers--all scrupulously free from weeds,
and those most melancholy symptoms of neglect, which even in public
cemeteries too often impress the beholder with gloomy premonitions of
his own inevitable future, and recall the solemn admonition of the
Talmud: "Life is a passing shadow. Is it the shadow of a tower, or of
a tree? A shadow that prevails for a while? No, it is the shadow of a
bird in his flight,--away flies the bird, and there remains neither
bird nor shadow."

Has the profoundly religious sentiment of reverence for the domains
of death lost or gained by the modern practice of municipal monopoly
of the right of sepulture? Who, amid the pomp and splendour of
Greedwood or Mount Auburn, where human vanity builds its own proud
monument in the mausoleums of the dead,--who, in hurrying along the
broad and beautiful avenues thronged with noisy groups of chattering
pedestrians, and with gay equipages that render the name "City of
silence" a misnomer, converting it into a _quasi_ Festa ground, a
scene for subdued Sunday _Fete Champetre_,--who, passing from these
magnificent city cemeteries, into some primitive old-fashioned
churchyard, such as that of V----, has not