an air of
duty done. The lovers of churchyards linger, and stroll thoughtfully
among the tombs. They find a charm in the most obscure memorials of the
dead. They read aloud to each other the quaint inscriptions. Now and
again they pause, note-book in hand, to copy some chiseled epitaph that
strikes the fancy. They kneel or lie prone upon the turf before a
crumbling tomb to decipher its doleful couplets, thrusting aside the
concealing grasses, lest a word be missed. They wander here and there
beneath the shadow of the venerable elms and pines, and, before
departing, enter the old church, to rest and pray within the stillness
of its fane.

[Illustration: _Alice Choate_

A GLIMPSE FROM THE RECTORY]

Aside from the part of the churchyard reserved for the burials of the
Cooper family, the only enclosed plot is the small one just south of it,
squared in by a low fence of rusty iron. This belonged to the family of
the Rev. Frederick T. Tiffany, who succeeded Father Nash as rector of
Christ Church, and afterward became a chaplain in Congress.

The oldest tomb in the churchyard holds an inconspicuous place two tiers
east of the Tiffany enclosure. It is the grave of Samuel Griffin, the
inn-keeper's child, who died at the Red Lion Tavern. The gravestone is
dated 1792, which is ancient for this part of the country.

In the first burials within these grounds, it was the intention to
regard the old Christian tradition in accord with which the dead are
buried with the feet toward the east. Yet, since the graves naturally
follow the parallel of the enclosure, which is not exactly east and
west, but conforms to the general bent of the village, they fall short,
by a few points of the compass, of facing due east.

Among the early settlers of Cooperstown there was one family not to be
put off with any vagueness of orientation. It was that of Joshua Starr,
a potter, whom Fenimore Cooper describes as "a respectable inhabitant of
the village." To the mind of Joshua Starr, who survived the other
members of his family, it was plain that if a proper grave should face
east, it should face the east, and not east by south. Accordingly, the
graves of the Starr family, a few steps northward from Samuel Griffin's,
are notable among the tombs of Christ churchyard in being set with the
foot due east, as by a mariner's compass. The wide headstones split the
plane of the meridian; their edges cleave the noonday sun and the polar
star. To the casua