a personal intercourse with my heavenly Father--and,
extravagantly, put off the shoes from my feet--for the place where I
stood I thought, was holy ground.

This state of mind could not last long, and I returned with languid
feelings to my inn. I ordered my dinner--green peas and a
sweetbread--it had been a favorite dish with me in my childhood--I
was allowed to have it on my birthdays. I was impatient to see it
come upon table--but, when it came, I could scarce eat a mouthful--my
tears choked me. I called for wine--I drank a pint and a half of red
wine--and not till then had I dared to visit the church-yard, where
my parents were interred.

The _cottage_ lay in my way--Margaret had chosen it for that very
reason, to be near the church--for the old lady was regular in her
attendance on public worship--I passed on--and in a moment found
myself among the tombs.

I had been present at my father's burial, and knew the spot again--my
mother's funeral I was prevented by illness from attending--a plain
stone was placed over the grave, with their initials carved upon
it--for they both occupied one grave.

I prostrated myself before the spot--I kissed the earth that covered
them--I contemplated, with gloomy delight, the time when I should
mingle my dust with theirs--and kneeled, with my arms incumbent on
the gravestone, in a kind of mental prayer--for I could not speak.

Having performed these duties, I arose with quieter feelings, and
felt leisure to attend to indifferent objects.--Still I continued in
the church-yard, reading the various inscriptions, and moralizing on
them with that kind of levity, which will not unfrequently spring up
in the mind, in the midst of deep melancholy.

I read of nothing but careful parents, loving husbands, and dutiful
children. I said jestingly, where be all the _bad_ people buried? Bad
parents, bad husbands, bad children--what cemeteries are appointed
for these?--do they not sleep in consecrated ground? or is it but a
pious fiction, a generous oversight, in the survivors, which thus
tricks out men's epitaphs when dead, who, in their lifetime,
discharged the offices of life, perhaps, but lamely? Their failings,
with their reproaches, now sleep with them in the grave. _Man wars
not with the dead._ It is a _trait_ of human nature, for which I love
it.

I had not observed, till now, a little group assembled at the other
end of the church-yard; it was a company of children, who were
gathe