"
"You seem," said Hollingsworth, "to be trying how much nonsense you
can pour out in a breath."
"I wish you would see fit to comprehend," retorted I, "that the
profoundest wisdom must be mingled with nine tenths of nonsense, else
it is not worth the breath that utters it. But I do long for the
cottages to be built, that the creeping plants may begin to run over
them, and the moss to gather on the walls, and the trees--which we
will set out--to cover them with a breadth of shadow. This
spick-and-span novelty does not quite suit my taste. It is time, too,
for children to be born among us. The first-born child is still to
come. And I shall never feel as if this were a real, practical, as
well as poetical system of human life, until somebody has sanctified
it by death."
"A pretty occasion for martyrdom, truly!" said Hollingsworth.
"As good as any other," I replied. "I wonder, Hollingsworth, who, of
all these strong men, and fair women and maidens, is doomed the first
to die. Would it not be well, even before we have absolute need of
it, to fix upon a spot for a cemetery? Let us choose the rudest,
roughest, most uncultivable spot, for Death's garden ground; and
Death shall teach us to beautify it, grave by grave. By our sweet,
calm way of dying, and the airy elegance out of which we will shape
our funeral rites, and the cheerful allegories which we will model
into tombstones, the final scene shall lose its terrors; so that
hereafter it may be happiness to live, and bliss to die.
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