In walking through a country graveyard one sees a prominent granite or
marble monument here and there, but more of the stones that mark the
resting-places of the dead are modest in appearance, plain and humble. But
there are some graves that are unmarked by any outward token of
remembrance. Such graves may hold the dust of as great and good men and
women as those spots above which has been raised the lofty shaft and
costly design.
Graveyards are just as deceptive as are the homes of the living. A fine
house is not proof of the moral, the manly or womanly worth of its
occupant. Saints do not sleep beneath the gilded roof any more than under
a leaky thatch. So also the wise, the good, the true, are not the ones
over whose ashes rises the chiseled stone. The dead may deserve monuments
that the living are not able to buy.
A graveyard might be called a library of lies. Epitaphs are to be read,
and believed, if you can believe them. We have found as big falsehoods in
cemeteries as in newspapers. “Say nothing bad of the dead” is kindly
counsel, but, say nothing of the dead on a tombstone, is wiser.
We have seen a towering stone covered with words of praise over the ashes
of a man, who, while living, was simply a lover of money. We have seen the
sunken grave of a woman, with no marble to adorn it, who lived a heroic
life of love and duty beyond words to tell. If virtues bore monuments one
would rise over the neglected grave of that saintly woman that would reach
the clouds, and that other grave would be stripped of its marble and left
to oblivion.
Though a cemetery is more or less a museum of vanity and pride, there is
at the bottom of the costly display of granite and marble a tender
feeling, a commendable virtue. There may be as much love and respect for
those in unmarked graves as for those who sleep in costly masonry or
beneath sculptured stone. In walking through a graveyard, if our steps
should go to the places where no monument invited the eye, they would be
more likely to walk over the dust of those who did life’s duty well, than
if they paused only before the imposing shaft or read the marble tale of
virtue that never was told in deeds.
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God never helps those who need the help of men and women.
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No man ever knew Providence to interpose when his neighbor’s hens are
scratching up his garden.