Page:The Englishwoman in America (IA englishwomaninam00birdrich).pdf/393

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Chap. XVII.
THE CEMETERY.
379

added. It is said that, when this poor man returns from a voyage, he spends one whole day in the tomb, lamenting his bereavement.

There is a superb monument, erected by a fireman's company to the memory of one of their brethren, who lost his life while nobly rescuing an infant from a burning dwelling. His statue is on the top, with an infant in his arms, and the implements of his profession lie below. But by far the most extraordinary, and certainly one of the lions of New York, is to a young lady who was killed in coming home from a ball. The carriage-horses ran away, she jumped out, and was crushed under the wheels. She stands under a marble canopy supported by angels, and is represented in her ball-dress, with a mantle thrown over it. This monument has numerous pillars and representations of celestial beings, and is said to have cost about 6000l. Several of the marble mausoleums cost from 4000l. to 5000l. Yet all the powerful, the wealthy, and the poor have descended to the dust from whence they sprung; and here, as everywhere else, nothing can disguise the fact that man, the feeble sport of passion and infirmity, can only claim for his inheritance at last the gloom of a silent grave, where he must sleep with the dust of his fathers. I observed only one verse of Scripture on a tombstone, and it contained the appropriate prayer, "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

Having seen the emigrants bid adieu to the Old World, in the flurry of grief, hope, and excitement, I was curious to see what difference a five-weeks' voyage