The white sea-gulls were floating through the air, often stooping as if to dip their wings in the ocean waves, that murmured gently upon the winding shore.

There was scarce a cloud to be seen in the sky, and the calmness of nature whispered peace to the weary spirit.

As we crossed the ferry and entered the city, and witnessed the moving tide of human life that was surging through the city mart jostling against each other in their eager chase; and as we looked out upon the motly group, human life was to be seen in almost all its forms.

Wealth hung out his golden trappings, and rolled by in all the splendor of ease and luxury The children of poverty trudged on in tattered garments, stung by pinching want, bearing heavy burdens upon their heads, and weighed down by oppression.

These scenes awoke many reflections in the mind, and presented the contrast of life.

Passing through the city with its tumults and its changes, we pursued our way through Cambridge to the Cemetery.

The scenery was beautiful, and as we passed the elm tree where Washington stood to give command to his army, how many associations rushed upon the mind, filling it with remembrances of our country’s early struggles.

We entered the quiet shades “where rest the dead,” sleeping beneath the sober shadows of the forest trees that were scattering now and then a withered leaf upon the grassy mounds that lay at their feet.  Here still, even here too, is the same contrast so visible in the moving, active life of the city.

Wealth here has the splendid monument, embellished with all the sculptor’s art, while the poor sleep as sweetly beneath the simple sod.

Our first visit was to the Chapel.  You are struck upon your entrance with the hollow sounds that reverberate at every footfall, reminding one of the emptiness of all earthly things.

There was a coffin within the paling, covered with a black pall, speaking to us of death and decay; but as we raised our eyes to the stained glass windows, through which the autumnal sun was pouring his mellow rays, and casting such a subdued and peculiar light upon all things in the Chapel, and saw the heavenly expression of the angels as they took their upward flight, the soul seemed big with immortality, and the Christian’s hope teeming with a better life, was cheering to it, lifting it up till the things of earth looked dim, distant, shadowy.

The beautiful statue, too, touched so nicely by the hand of art, as to look like breathing marble, points the beholder upward to the skies.  This Chapel, standing as it does at the entrance of the Cemetery, is well calculated to solemnize, the mind, and prepare it for the contemplations of the surrounding scene.

As we left its quiet retreat and pursued our onward way, sad thoughts came stealing over the mind, as we reflected how many aching hearts and tearful eyes had passed over that road to deposit the dearly loved, and lost in their last resting places.