Their decorous carousal was at its height, and the ladies, one and

all, had sought their respective rooms to recuperate their wearied

energies by a loll, if not a siesta, that they might be in trim for

the evening's enjoyment (Christmas lasted a whole week at Ridgeley)

when four strapping field hands, barefooted, that their tramp might

not break the epicurean slumbers, brought down from the desolate

upper chamber a rough pine coffin, manufactured and screwed tight by

the plantation carpenter, and after halting a minute in the back

porch to pull on their boots, took their way across the lawn and

fields to the servants' burial-place. This was in a pine grove, two

furlongs or more from the garden fence, forming the lower enclosure

of the mansion grounds. The intervening dell was knee-deep in

drifted snow, the hillside bare in spots, and ridged high in others,

where the wind-currents had swirled from base to summit. The passage

was a toilsome one, and the stalwart bearers halted several times to

shift their light burden before they laid it down upon the mound of

mixed snow and red clay at the mouth of the grave. Half-a-dozen

others were waiting there to assist in the interment, and at the

head of the pit stood a white-headed negro, shaking with palsy and

cold--the colored chaplain of the region, who, more out of custom

and superstition than a sense of religious responsibility--least of

all motives, through respect for the dead--had braved the inclement

weather to say a prayer over the wanderer's last home.

The storm had abated at noon, and the snow no longer fell, but there

had been no sunshine through all the gloomy day, and the clouds were

now mustering thickly again to battle, while the rising gale in the

pine-tops was hoarse and wrathful. Far as the eye could reach were

untrodden fields of snow; gently-rolling hills, studded with shrubs

and tinged in patches by russet bristles of broom-straw; the river

swollen into blackness between the white banks, and the dark horizon

of forest seeming to uphold the gray firmament. To the right of the

spectator, who stood on the eminence occupied by the cemetery, lay

Ridgeley, with its environing outhouses, crowning the most ambitious

height of the chain, the smoke from its chimneys and those of the

village of cabins beating laboriously upward, to be borne down at

last by the lowering mass of chilled vapor.

The coffin was deposited in its place with scant show of reverence,

and without removing their hats, the bystanders leaned on their

spades, and looked to the preacher for the ceremony that was to

authorize them to hurry through with their distasteful task. That

the gloom of the hour and scene, and the utter forlornness of all

the accompaniments of what was meant for Christian burial, had

stamped themselves upon the mind and heart of the unlettered slave,

was evident from the brief sentences he quavered out--joining his

withered hands and raising his bleared eyes toward the threatening

heavens: "Lord! what is man, that thou art mindful of him! For that which

befalleth man befalleth beasts--even one thing befalleth them. All

go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

Who knoweth the spirit of man that goeth upward, and the spirit of

the beast that goeth downward to the earth? Man cometh in with

vanity and departeth in darkness, and his name shall be covered with

darkness. The dead know not anything, for the memory of them is

forgotten. Also their love, and their hatred, and their envy is now

perished, neither have they a portion for ever in anything that is

done under the sun.




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