many of them at baptism, he had married them
and buried their dead; they were his flock, and they listened to his
words as to one ripe in wisdom and sainted in his life.

He looked about the little burial ground and his eyes took on an earnest
light and his voice a deep thrill as he spoke.

"If," said he, "there is anywhere a spot which is hallowed ground it is
this spot where we are now laying to her eternal rest what yesterday was
mortal of Elizabeth Burton. She is, save her daughter, the last of the
name to be taken; and in that greater life to which she goes, she will
be reunited with those who loved her and who went before.

"She will share with them--" the preacher paused for a moment then went
on--"the glory of reward which, I think, God loves best to bestow upon
those who, with steadfast unselfishness, have lived simple lives and
left their fellows better for having lived. I do not know how God
measures the deeds of men, or with what degrees of reward he fixes their
place in Paradise; but I feel that I stand on holy ground as my eyes
wander here and fall upon these graves where the Burtons sleep. I know
that once this was a land of want and misery; a country of abandoned
farms. Today I look about me, and, under skies that seem to sing, I see
a land redeemed. It was not redeemed by great wealth from without, but
by resolution and dauntless effort from within. I have spoken of the
headstones that mark these graves, but the Burtons have a nobler
monument. The roads and schools and the aqueduct--all the things that
transformed the land are memorials to the man who lies just there
beyond this grave where today we place his mother. On that slab we find
only the dates of birth and death and the name of Hamilton Burton; but
when I look at it, I seem to read a nobler epitaph in letters of bronze
which no weather can dim or tarnish. I seem to read--'Here lies one who
put aside a blazing dream to cast his lot into a life of humbler duty.'
If he who makes two blades of grass grow where one had grown before has
done a noble thing, then surely he who has turned a land of want into a
land of independence and made crops grow where none grew before has won
his place near the throne."

Again the aged pastor paused and his eyes grew misty. With bared heads
bent and a stillness broken only by the rustle of the breeze through the
trees and the song of a bird, his listeners stood attentive, and he
resumed.

"I need not tell you,