The white pine, the various species of firs, the rhododendron, mixed with the maple, the elm, and the tulip tree, have found their way into the sacred enclosure.  The reproach of Puritanic insensibility is wiped out.  Europe may boast of prouder monuments, but she has no burial-places so beautiful as some of ours.  Pere la Chaise is splendid in marble and iron, but the loveliness of nature is wanting.  Sweet Auburn, and Greenwood, and Laurel Hill are peerless in their mournful charms.

The coffin was lowered into the grave in silence.  No solemn voice pronounced the farewell “ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”  The ceremonies were concluded.  The minister took off his hat, and addressing the bystanders, some of whom, respectfully imitating his example, raised the coverings from their heads, thanked them in the name of the afflicted family for this last tribute of regard.  The procession was formed again, and slowly returned to the house, leaving the grave-digger to shovel in the gravel and complete his task.

As Mr. Armstrong and Faith walked home together, but few words were exchanged between them.  Each was absorbed in reflection upon the scene just witnessed.  In Faith’s mind it was solemn, but devoid of gloom.  With the hopefulness of health and youth, gleams of sunshine played over the grave.  She looked beyond, and hoped and trusted.

But with her father it was different.  Had it not been for him Sill might have been alive and well.  He had made the wife a widow and her children orphans.  He had introduced weeping and wailing into a happy home.  But this was a slight calamity, and hardly worthy of a thought in comparison with another.  The words of the minister, that the victim had been hurried to his sentence without time for preparation recurred with a feeling of horror.  It was he through whose instrumentality Sill had been thrust into tormenting but undestroying flames.  Better that he had never been born.  Better that he had been strangled in the hour of his birth.

With thoughts like these, this unhappy man, whose heart was the seat of all the virtues, tormented himself.  It seemed sometimes strange that people did not point their fingers at him:  that he was not arrested for the murder:  that he was permitted to walk abroad in the sunshine.  His mind, unknown to those about him, unknown to himself, was hovering on the confines of insanity.  Only a spark, perhaps, was necessary to light a conflagration.  Alas! that one so good, so noble, should be a victim of destiny.  But we forbear to intrude further into reflections alike miserable and insane.

Mr. Armstrong felt more composed the next day, and in the afternoon, accompanied by Faith, went to the dwelling of the widow.  They found her engaged in ordinary family affairs.  The duties to the living must be respected.  To neither rich nor poor does sorrow furnish an excuse for their neglect.  Let the mind find something to occupy it, the hand something to do.  Thus do we become sooner reconciled to those dispensations of Providence at which our weakness, and ignorance, and presumption rebel.