Letters of a Traveller eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 376 pages of information about Letters of a Traveller.
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Letters of a Traveller eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 376 pages of information about Letters of a Traveller.
the carriage-way is a row of trees.  In the centre of the village is a square with an arcade for a market, and a little aside from the main street, in a hollow covered with bright green grass, is another square, in the midst of which stands a large white church.  Near it is an avenue, with two immense lime-trees growing at the gate, leading to the field in which they bury their dead.  Looking upon this square is a large building, three or four stories high, where a school for boys is kept, to which pupils are sent from various parts of the country, and which enjoys a very good reputation.  We entered the garden of this school, an inclosure thickly overshadowed with tall forest and exotic trees of various kinds, with shrubs below, and winding walks and summer-houses and benches.  The boys of the school were amusing themselves under the trees, and the arched walks were ringing with their shrill voices.

We visited also the burying place, which is situated on a little eminence, backed with a wood, and commands a view of the village.  The Moravian grave is simple in its decorations; a small flat stone, of a square shape, lying in the midst, between the head and foot, is inscribed with the name of the dead, the time and place of his birth, and the time when, to use their own language, he “departed,” and this is the sole epitaph.  But innovations have been recently made on this simplicity; a rhyming couplet or quatrain is now sometimes added, or a word in praise of the dead One recent grave was loaded with a thick tablet of white marble, which covered it entirely, and bore an inscription as voluminous as those in the burial places of other denominations.  The graves, as in all Moravian burying grounds, are arranged in regular rows, with paths at right angles between them, and sometimes a rose-tree is planted at the head of the sleeper.

As we were leaving Nazareth, the innkeeper came to us, and asked if we would allow a man who was travelling to Easton to take a seat in our carriage with the driver.  We consented, and a respectable-looking, well-clad, middle-aged person, made his appearance.  When we had proceeded a little way, we asked him some questions, to which he made no other reply than to shake his head, and we soon found that he understood no English.  I tried him with German, which brought a ready reply in the same language.  He was a native of Pennsylvania, he told me, born at Snow Hill, in Lehigh county, not very many miles from Nazareth.  In turn, he asked me where I came from, and when I bid him guess, he assigned my birthplace to Germany, which showed at least that he was not very accurately instructed in the diversities with which his mother tongue is spoken.

As we entered Easton, the yellow woods on the hills and peaks that surround the place, were lit up with a glowing autumnal sunset.  Soon afterward we crossed the Lehigh, and took a walk along its bank in South Easton, where a little town has recently grown up; the sidewalks along its dusty streets were freshly swept for Saturday night.  As it began to grow dark, we found ourselves strolling in front of a row of iron mills, with the canal on one side and the Lehigh on the other.  One of these was a rolling mill, into which we could look from the bank where we stood, and observe the whole process of the manufacture, which is very striking.

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Letters of a Traveller from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.