But the sweets of that widow's present sorrow will be soon extracted.
How many weeks will she find it a pleasure to make morning visits here
and plait pretty flowers on the grave of her husband?--The grave in the
next inclosure furnishes an answer to the question. A few months ago,
it, too, was tended at sunrise by just such a tearful woman; but now the
wreaths of evergreen are yellow, and the weeds are springing up among
the withered garlands. The living partner has visited already the
"mitigated grief" department of the mourning store, and the severed
cords of her affections have been spliced and made almost as good as
new. Not that I would not have it so; not that I believe the grief of
woman to be less real and sincere than man's, though it _be_ enjoyed;
not that I would have her thrum a long mournful threnody on the
harpstrings of her heart, and waste on the dead, who need them not,
affections which, Heaven knows, the living need too much.
Retracing my steps, and descending the opposite slope of the hill, I
entered a beautiful vale covered with stately tombs and containing a
little lake, in the middle of which a fountain was springing high into
the air. In a spot so much frequented at a later hour of the day only a
single human being was in sight,--a young man, perhaps five-and-twenty
years of age, jauntily dressed, and his upper lip adorned with a long
moustache, who was leaning lazily upon a marble balustrade, and staring,
with a stupid, vacant look, at the massive monument it surrounded.
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