According to my wont, I pay a visit to the dead, who lie scattered all
around the old church. Scattered do I say? Why, the very ground on which I
walk is made up of them. When another dead villager is buried, what occurs
is merely a displacement of human remains. As one body goes down, the bones
and dust of others come up to the surface. Wherever I walk I see bones, and
if I were an anatomist I could tell the use and place of each in the human
economy. One might well suppose that in these rural districts, where land
is of so little value, there would be but slight disturbance of dead men's
bones. Observation, however, tells a very different story. These country
churchyards are very small, and nobody but the stranger seems to think that
there is any reason why they should be larger. There is little or no buying
of graves 'in perpetuity' here, and very little grave-marking, except by
mounds and wooden crosses. Years pass quickly, while the briar and the
thistle and the bindweed grow apace, like the new interests and affections
that spring up in the minds and hearts of the mourners. Who are they who
carry flowers to the graves of their grandfathers?
Think of the population of an entire village being swallowed up every
fifty or seventy years by this patch of ground that would make but a small
garden, and of this movement going on century after century! It is surely
no matter for marvel that it has become as difficult to hide the bones as
the pebbles whenever a bit of soil has been lately turned.
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