feeling lines:

Tread softly o'er this sacred mound
For Mary lies beneath this ground
May garlands deck and myrtles rise
To guard the Tomb where Mary lies.

A short distance eastward from the centre of the churchyard, and nearly
abreast of the obelisk commemorating Father Nash, stands somewhat apart
the rugged tombstone of Scipio, an old slave. Aside from the graves of
Fenimore Cooper and his father, the founder of the village, not
forgetting the grave of Jenny York,[117] which is the joy of the
churchyard, no tomb in the enclosure receives more attention from
strangers than that of Scipio, with its quaint verses descriptive of the
aged slave.

North of this stone, after passing three intervening tombs, one comes
upon an odd inscription that marks the grave of a fourteen-year-old
boy, who was drowned December 3, 1810:

Thus were Parents bereavd
of a dutiful son and community
of a promising youth, while
pursuing with assiduity the
act of industry.

What this act of industry was that cost the life of young Garrett
Bissell is not related.

A number of those buried in Christ churchyard died violent deaths; one
was murdered, and another was hanged, but that story has been already
told.

"Joe Tom," a negro whose tomb fronts the east end of the churchyard,
where the members of his race were buried apart from the whites, was for
more than a score of years sexton of Christ Church, and when he died, in
1881, had been for a half a century a unique figure in the life of the
village. "Joe Tom" was always the general factotum at public
entertainments, and had won a title as "the politest negro in the
world." Music of a lively sort he scraped from the fiddle or beat upon
the triangle. He was head usher at meetings, chief cook at picnics, a
stentorian prompter at dances, and chief oar at lake excursions.

On one occasion there was to be a burial in the churchyard in the
afternoon, for which Joe had made no preparation before escorting a
picnic party to Three-Mile Point in the morning. Suddenly he remembered
the funeral. Seizing a boat he rowed hastily back to the village,
commenced digging the grave, tolled the bell, and, while the funeral
service was being held in the church, completed his task, standing ready
with solemn visage to perform the final duty of casting the earth upon
the coffin. He then went back to the Point, and finished the day by
escorting his party home. Not