Stopping at the village hotel for some preparation, I wended my way to the little cemetery.  There was a picture in memory of a green hill-side slope, which, whenever the dark funeral day was recalled, formed a vivid and prominent feature of the scene; and so, upon that day, I found within the little “city of the silent” the identical hill-side, but, with the most scrutinizing search, failed to find the sacred mound holding the most hallowed form of the home group, and over which were shed the bitter tears of childhood’s grief, more poignant and more lasting than we usually attribute to that period of life.

In the hope of eliciting some information I entered a cottage near by, which I found inhabited by aged people; but as they had been residents only seven years, and twenty-four years had elapsed since my mother was laid to rest, they could give me no light or aid, save the simple suggestion that there were a number of graves covered by the undergrowth of shrubbery, and perchance hers might be one of them.  Accepting the possibility I found the one I sought, which could not fail to be recognized, for strange to say, time had dealt so gently that the slender picket fence was undecayed by his “effacing; lingers,” and the name painted upon the little wooden head-board was distinctly visible.  Grouped in quadrangular growth were four little trees, gracefully arching in a bowery drapery over the grave, as if nature in strange sympathy with the mourners left behind had offered this tribute to the noble mother.  How vividly came back again the long lost childhood home, and as the wind sighed through the leafy boughs, seemed to sob a sad requiem for the dead.  There was a little song I had learned in the Institution, and had so often sang, when unknown to those around me every chord in my sad heart seemed

    “As harp-strings broken asunder,
    By music they throbbed to express.”

Then the sweet, sad words come back in memory,

    “I hear the soft winds sighing,
      Through every bush and tree;
    Where my dear mother’s lying,
      Away from love and me.

    Tears from mine eyes are weeping,
      And sorrow shades my brow;
    Long time has she been sleeping—­
      I have no mother now.”

After a long, lingering look, I turned sadly away, going to the little marble yard in the vicinity, and seeking the proper person, I communicated to him the desire for a head and foot-stone for the grave, together with marble corner stones to support an iron chain for an enclosure, asking him for an estimate of the cost.

Looking at me with almost tearful emotion, he said, when the blind girl, after the lapse of twenty-four years, comes back to offer a tribute to the memory of her mother, the result of her own unaided earnings, I can but be generous, and offered to do all for half the usual price.  Knowing instinctively that I could trust him, I left all in his hands, and have never had occasion to feel that I had misplaced my confidence.