his superiority, and who, while making
a jest of his own trials and infirmities, could still listen with real
sympathy to the querulous and importunate complaints of others. For one
day, at least, even the sunny faces of childhood were marked with
unwonted thoughtfulness; the shadow of the common bereavement fell over
the play-ground and nursery. The little girl remembered, with tears,
how her broken-limbed doll had taxed the surgical ingenuity of her
genial old friend; and the boy showed sorrowfully to his playmates the
top which the good Doctor had given him. If there were few, among the
many who stood beside his grave, capable of rightly measuring and
appreciating the high intellectual and spiritual nature which formed the
background of his simple social life, all could feel that no common loss
had been sustained, and that the kindly and generous spirit which had
passed away from them had not lived to himself alone.

As you follow the windings of one of the loveliest rivers of New
England, a few miles above the sea-mart, at its mouth, you can see on a
hill, whose grassy slope is checkered with the graceful foliage of the
locust, and whose top stands relieved against a still higher elevation,
dark with oaks and walnuts, the white stones of the burying-place. It
is a quiet spot, but without gloom, as befits "God's Acre." Below is
the village, with its sloops and fishing-boats at the wharves, and its
crescent of white houses mirrored in the water. Eastward is the misty
line of the great sea. Blue peaks of distant mountains roughen the
horizon of the north. Westward, the broad, clear river winds away into
a maze of jutting bluffs and picturesque wooded headlands. The tall,
white stone on the westerly slope of the hill bears the name of
"Nicholas Singletary, M. D.," and marks the spot which he selected many
years before his death. When I visited it last spring, the air about it
was fragrant with the bloom of sweet-brier and blackberry and the
balsamic aroma of the sweet-fern; birds were singing in the birch-trees
by the wall; and two little, brown-locked, merry-faced girls were making
wreaths of the dandelions and grasses which grew upon the old man's
grave. The sun was setting behind the western river-bluffs, flooding
the valley with soft light, glorifying every object and fusing all into
harmony and beauty. I saw and felt nothing to depress or sadden me. I
could have joined in the laugh of the children. The