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The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table-Part33_Oliver Wendell Holmes(1809-1894)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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reinforced.

- Will you walk out and look at those elms with me after breakfast?



- I said to the schoolmistress.

[I am not going to tell lies about it, and say that she blushed, -



as I suppose she ought to have done, at such a tremendous piece of

gallantry as that was for our boarding-house. On the contrary, she



turned a little pale, - but smiled brightly and said, - Yes, with

pleasure, but she must walk towards her school. - She went for her



bonnet. - The old gentleman opposite followed her with his eyes,

and said he wished he was a young fellow. Presently she came down,



looking very pretty in her half-mourning bonnet, and carrying a

school-book in her hand.]



MY FIRST WALK WITH THE SCHOOLMISTRESS.

This is the shortest way, - she said, as we came to a corner. -



Then we won't take it, - said I. - The schoolmistress laughed a

little, and said she was ten minutes early, so she could go round.



We walked under Mr. Paddock's row of English elms. The gray

squirrels were out looking for their breakfasts, and one of them



came toward us in light, soft, intermittent leaps, until he was

close to the rail of the burial-ground. He was on a grave with a



broad blue-slate-stone at its head, and a shrub growing on it. The

stone said this was the grave of a young man who was the son of an



Honorable gentleman, and who died a hundred years ago and more. -

Oh, yes, DIED, - with a small triangular mark in one breast, and



another smaller opposite, in his back, where another young man's

rapier had slid through his body; and so he lay down out there on



the Common, and was found cold the next morning, with the night-

dews and the death-dews mingled on his forehead.



Let us have one look at poor Benjamin's grave, - said I. - His

bones lie where his body was laid so long ago, and where the stone



says they lie, - which is more than can be said of most of the

tenants of this and several other burial-grounds.



[The most accursed act of Vandalism ever committed within my

knowledge was the uprooting of the ancient gravestones in three at



least of our city burialgrounds, and one at least just outside the

city, and planting them in rows to suit the taste for symmetry of



the perpetrators. Many years ago, when this disgraceful process

was going on under my eyes, I addressed an indignant remonstrance



to a leading journal. I suppose it was deficient in literary

elegance, or too warm in its language; for no notice was taken of



it, and the hyena-horror was allowed to complete itself in the face

of daylight. I have never got over it. The bones of my own



ancestors, being entombed, lie beneath their own tablet; but the

upright stones have been shuffled about like chessmen, and nothing



short of the Day of Judgment will tell whose dust lies beneath any

of those records, meant by affection to mark one small spot as



sacred to some cherished memory. Shame! shame! shame! - that is

all I can say. It was on public thoroughfares, under the eye of



authority, that this infamy was enacted. The red Indians would

have known better; the selectmen of an African kraal-village would



have had more respect for their ancestors. I should like to see

the gravestones which have been disturbed all removed, and the



ground levelled, leaving the flat tombstones; epitaphs were never

famous for truth, but the old reproach of "Here LIES" never had



such a wholesaleillustration as in these outraged burial-places,

where the stone does lie above, and the bones do not lie beneath.]



Stop before we turn away, and breathe a woman's sigh over poor

Benjamin's dust. Love killed him, I think. Twenty years old, and



out there fighting another young fellow on the Common, in the cool

of that old July evening; - yes, there must have been love at the



bottom of it.

The schoolmistress dropped a rosebud she had in her hand, through



the rails, upon the grave of Benjamin Woodbridge. That was all her

comment upon what I told her. - How women love Love! said I; - but



she did not speak.

We came opposite the head of a place or court runningeastward from



the main street. - Look down there, - I said, - My friend the

Professor lived in that house at the left hand, next the further



corner, for years and years. He died out of it, the other day. -

Died? - said the schoolmistress. - Certainly, - said I. - We die



out of houses, just as we die out of our bodies. A commercial

smash kills a hundred men's houses for them, as a railroad crash






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