_July 29, 1881_.--After more than forty years' absence, (except a brief
visit, to take my father there once more, two years before he died,)
went down Long Island on a week' s jaunt to the place where I was born,
thirty miles from New York city. Rode around the old familiar spots,
viewing and pondering and dwelling long upon them, every-thing coming
back to me. Went to the old Whitman homestead on the upland and took a
view eastward, inclining south, over the broad and beautiful farm lands
of my grandfather (1780,) and my father. There was the new house (1810,)
the big oak a hundred and fifty or two hundred years old; there
the well, the sloping kitchen-garden, and a little way off even the
well-kept remains of the dwelling of my great-grandfather (1750-'60)
still standing, with its mighty timbers and low ceilings. Near by, a
stately grove of tall, vigorous black-walnuts, beautiful, Apollo-like,
the sons or grandsons, no doubt, of black-walnuts during or before 1776.
On the other side of the road spread the famous apple orchard, over
twenty acres, the trees planted by hands long mouldering in the grave
(my uncle Jesse's,) but quite many of them evidently capable of throwing
out their annual blossoms and fruit yet.
I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubtless of a century
since at least) on the burial hill of the Whitmans of many generations.
Fifty or more graves are quite plainly traceable, and as many more
decay'd out of all form--depress'd mounds, crumbled and broken stones,
cover'd with moss--the gray and sterile hill, the clumps of chestnuts
outside, the silence, just varied by the soughing wind. There is
always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any of these ancient
graveyards of which Long Island has so many; so what must this one have
been to me? My whole family history, with its succession of links,
from the first settlement down to date, told here--three centuries
concentrate on this sterile acre.
The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal locality, and if
possible was still more penetrated and impress'd. I write this paragraph
on the burial hul of the Van Velsors, near Cold Spring, the most
significant depository of the dead that could be imagin'd, without the
slightest help from art, but far ahead of it, soil sterile, a mostly
bare plateau-flat of half an acre, the top of a hill, brush and well
grown trees and dense woods bordering all around, very primi-tive,
secluded, no visitors, no road (you cannot drive here, you have to bring
the dead on foot, and follow on foot.) Two or three-score graves quite
plain; as many more almost rubb'd out. My grandfather Cornelius and my
grandmother Amy (Naomi) and numerous relatives nearer or remoter, on
my mother's side, lie buried here. The scene as I stood or sat, the
delicate and wild odor of the woods, a slightly drizzling rain, the
emotional atmosphere of the place, and the inferr'd reminiscences, were
fitting accompaniments.