urmounted by
symbolic figures.

"It is such an unsympathetic, tasteless-looking thing!" said Miss
Lamont.

"Do you think it is the worst in the country?"

"I wouldn't like to say that," replied the artist, "when the competition
in this direction is so lively. But just look at the drawing" (holding
up his pencil with which he had intended to sketch it). "If it were
quaint, now, or rude, or archaic, it might be in keeping, but bad
drawing is just vulgar. I should think it had been designed by a
carpenter, and executed by a stone-mason."

"Yes," said the little Lamont, who always fell in with the most
abominable opinions the artist expressed; "it ought to have been made of
wood, and painted and sanded."

"You will please remember," mildly suggested King, who had found the
name he was in search of, "that you are trampling on my ancestral
sensibilities, as might be expected of those who have no ancestors who
ever landed or ever were buried anywhere in particular. I look at the
commemorative spirit rather than the execution of the monument."

"So do I," retorted the girl; "and if the Pilgrims landed in such a
vulgar, ostentatious spirit as this, I'm glad my name is not on the
tablet."

The party were in a better mood when they had climbed up Burial Hill,
back of the meeting-house, and sat down on one of the convenient benches
amid the ancient gravestones, and looked upon the wide and magnificent
prospect. A soft summer wind waved a little the long gray grass of
the ancient resting-place, and seemed to whisper peace to the weary
generation that lay there. What struggles, what heroisms, the names on
the stones recalled! Here had stood the first fort of 1620, and here the
watchtower of 1642, from the top of which the warder espied the lurking
savage, or hailed the expected ship from England. How much of history
this view recalled, and what pathos of human life these graves
made real. Read the names of those buried a couple of centuries
ago--captains, elders, ministers, governors, wives well beloved,
children a span long, maidens in the blush of womanhood--half the tender
inscriptions are illegible; the stones are broken, sunk, slanting to
fall. What a pitiful attempt to keep the world mindful of the departed!

VI. MANCHESTER-BY-THE-SEA, ISLES OF SHOALS

Mr. Stanhope King was not in very good spirits. Even Boston did not
make him cheerful. He was half annoyed to see the artist and Miss Lamont
drifting along in s