And then there was "Grandmother Gray," and the
"Old woman from Newfoundland,
With all her children in her hand;"
and the
"Knight from Spain
Inquiring for your daughter Jane,"
and numberless others, nearly all of them bearing
a distinct Old World flavor. One of our play-places was an
unoccupied end of the burying-ground, overhung by the Colonel's
apple-trees and close under his wall, so that we should not be
too near the grave-stones.
I do not think that death was at all a real thing to me or to my
brothers and sisters at this time. We lived so near the grave-
yard that it seemed merely the extension of our garden. We
wandered there at will, trying to decipher the moss-grown
inscriptions, and wondering at the homely carvings of cross-bones
and cherubs and willow-trees on the gray slate-stones. I did not
associate those long green mounds with people who had once lived,
though we were careful, having been so instructed, not to step on
the graves. To ramble about there and puzzle ourselves with the
names and dates, was like turning over the pages of a curious old
book.
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