"Old woman from Newfoundland,
With all her children in her hand;"
and the
"Knight from Spain
Inquiring for your daughter Jane,"
and numberless others, nearly all of them bearing a distinct Old World
flavor. One of our play-places was an unoccupied end of the
burying-ground, overhung by the Colonel's apple-trees and close under
his wall, so that we should not be too near the grave-stones.
I do not think that death was at all a real thing to me or to my
brothers and sisters at this time. We lived so near the graveyard that
it seemed merely the extension of our garden. We wandered there at
will, trying to decipher the moss-grown inscriptions, and wondering at
the homely carvings of cross-bones and cherubs and willow-trees on the
gray slate-stones. I did not associate those long green mounds with
people who had once lived, though we were careful, having been so
instructed, not to step on the graves. To ramble about there and puzzle
ourselves with the names and dates, was like turning over the pages of
a curious old book. We had not the least feeling of irreverence in
taking the edge of the grave-yard for our playground. It was known as
"the old burying-ground"; and we children regarded it with a sort of
affectionate freedom, as we would a grandmother, because it was old.
That, indeed, was one peculiar attraction of the town itself; it was
old, and it seemed old, much older than it does now. There was only one
main street, said to have been the first settlers' cowpath to Wenham,
which might account for its zigzag picturesqueness. All the rest were
courts or lanes.
The town used to wear a delightful air of drowsiness, as if she had
stretched herself out for an afternoon nap, with her head towards her
old mother, Salem, and her whole length reclining towards the sea, till
she felt at her feet, through her green robes, the clip of the deep
water at the Farms. All her elder children recognized in her quiet
steady-going ways a maternal unity and strength of character, as of a
town that understood her own plans, and had settled down to peaceful,
permanent habits. Her spirit was that of most of our Massachusetts
coast-towns. They were transplanted shoots of Old England. And it was
the voice of a mother-country more ancient than their own, that little
children heard crooning across the sea in their cradle-hymns and
nursery-songs.