It is easier to wipe out a story from nature than to wipe it from the
heart; and these mutilated pages of the outer life perpetually renew in
us the pangs of loss and grief.
But not all our dooryard reminiscences are instinct with pain. Do I not
remember one swept and garnished plot, never defiled by weed or
disordered with ornamental plants, where stood old Deacon Pitts, upon
an historic day, and woke the echoes with a herald's joy? Deacon Pitts
had the ghoulish delight of the ennuied country mind in funerals and
the mortality of man; and this morning the butcher had brought him news
of death in a neighboring town. The butcher had gone by, and I was
going; but Deacon Pitts stood there, dramatically intent upon his
mournful morsel. I judged that he was pondering on the possibility of
attending the funeral without the waste of too much precious time now
due the crops. Suddenly, as he turned back toward the house, bearing a
pan of liver, his pondering eye caught sight of his aged wife toiling
across the fields, laden with pennyroyal. He set the pan down
hastily--yea, even before the advancing cat!--and made a trumpet of his
hands.
"Sarah!" he called piercingly. "Sarah! Mr. Amasa Blake's passed away!
Died yesterday!"
I do not know whether he was present at that funeral, but it would be
strange if he were not; for time and tide both served him, and he was
always on the spot.
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