Beyond the
short spire and its shining cock, rose the balls and stars and
arrowy vanes of the House, glittering in gold and sunshine.
The inward hush of the Resurrection, broken only by the prophetic
birds, the poets of the groaning and travailing creation, held time
and space as in a trance; and the centre from which radiated both
the hush and the carolling expectation seemed to Alexander Graham
to be the churchyard in which he was now walking in the cool of the
morning. It was more carefully kept than most Scottish churchyards,
and yet was not too trim. Nature had a word in the affair--
was allowed her part of mourning, in long grass and moss and the
crumbling away of stone. The wholesomeness of decay, which both
in nature and humanity is but the miry road back to life, was not
unrecognized here; there was nothing of the hideous attempt to hide
death in the garments of life. The master walked about gently, now
stopping to read some well known inscription and ponder for a moment
over the words; and now wandering across the stoneless mounds,
content to be forgotten by all but those who loved the departed. At
length he seated himself on a slab by the side of the mound that
rose but yesterday: it was sculptured with symbols of decay--
needless surely where the originals lay about the mouth of every
newly opened grave, and as surely ill befitting the precincts of
a church whose indwelling gospel is of life victorious over death!
"What are these stones," he said to himself, "but monuments to
oblivion? They are not memorials of the dead, but memorials of the
forgetfulness of the living.
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