“’As in the thronged and the lightened ways, so in
        the dark and the desert they stand,
    Wary and watchful all their days, that their brethren’s
        days may be long in the land.’

“If Hamilton Burton put aside such ambitions as most of us never know in our dreams, and chose the humbler combat of a simple life, close to God’s immortal granite, you have all been sharers in the benefit of his decision.

“And as it was with him, so in a lesser way it was with those others who sleep here close beside him.

    “’Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid
      Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;
    Hands that the rod of empire might have swayed,
      Or waked to ecstasy the living lyre. 
    Some village Hampden, that with dauntless breast,
      The little tyrant of his fields withstood,
    Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
      Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.’”

In the pause which followed a low breath of reverent surprise ran through the crowd that stood about the speaker.  They had lived day by day with Hamilton Burton until his death, and none of them had, in the shoulder-touch of life, ever suspected those deeper things of which now for the first time they heard.  They were hearing it all from lips which were to them as the lips of a prophet.  But the preacher was not through.

“And there was Paul.  You all knew him and loved him.  A nature was given him at birth almost too delicate for a world of hard affairs, but fragrant with a tenderness of love for his fellow-men.  He was attuned to harmony and his heart was that of a troubadour.

“Here in this little place of our worship, his fingers on the keys have often led us nearer to God’s presence than could the poor and broken messages I tried to preach to you.  For the other world was always close to Paul Burton and there was a magic in his minstrelsy, which was a gift from God.  I sometimes wonder if in a less simple world he could have been so happy or if his life would have been so unmarred, away from the songs of birds and the lilt of mountain breezes.  But among us he, too, lived and died—­because Hamilton Burton turned his back on the lure of the mirage his dreaming eyes had seen.  Even now when Paul has gone, those chimes, which you put there above our church in memory of him, seem to sing of the things for which he stood.  When their notes peal out on the Sabbath and go softly across the valley, I like to imagine that, through the nobler music which immortal ears may hear, he still catches their echo.

“There, close together, stand two more headstones, and beneath them sleep the father and the aunt of these men.  Thomas Burton, too, lived out a life of stalwart worth.  To all men, his fearless character and unshakable integrity were precepts.  He went his way and looked into every eye that met his own.  In the activities that have wrought these changes, he was always the first and last to work with tireless zeal.  When the railroad came it was through his untiring effort.  He held the determination with fighting Burton courage that adversity should not drive him from the land his forefathers had conquered.