"Headstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... Not there with the other dogs, the favorites of the King, but here, alone, disgraced, without even a headstone. Without even their names, although they saved the great King from death and gave their lives for his. Yet they lie here, and the others lie there. It is the ...
— As Seen By Me • Lilian Bell
... the line which separates the ludicrous from the sublime occurs in his peroration. He makes General Joshua conquer Death by lying down and giving up the ghost, and then asks for a headstone and a foot-stone for the holy corpse. "I imagine," he says, "that for the head it shall be the sun that stood still upon Gibeon, and for the foot the moon that stood still in the valley of Ajalon." This is about the finest piece of Yankee buncombe ...
— Arrows of Freethought • George W. Foote
... lived but a few days longer. They laid him to rest at last in the little ground which Captain Timothy Prescott had hewn out of the forest with his axe, where Captain Timothy himself lies under his slate headstone with the quaint lettering of bygone days.—That same autumn Jethro Bass made a pilgrimage to Boston, and now Cynthia Ware sleeps there, too, beside her husband, amid the ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill
... had been trod by the feet of his great forerunner. He visited, too, the lowly grave of the unfortunate Robert Fergusson; and it must be recorded to the shame of the magistrates of Edinburgh, that they allowed him to erect a headstone to his memory, and to the scandal of Scotland, that in such a memorial he had not been anticipated. He seems not to have regarded the graves of scholars or philosophers; and he trod the pavements where the warlike princes ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... north-west to south-east; and at the latter point there is a large upright headstone, averaging from ten to fifteen feet high, varying in its form, from the square, elliptical, and conical, to that of three-fourths of an egg; and having in many instances an aperture about eighteen inches ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... the stonemason, and sitting down amidst the fragmentary litter of the man's yard, George Talboys wrote in pencil this brief inscription for the headstone ...
— Lady Audley's Secret • Mary Elizabeth Braddon
... overcome; he leant upon a headstone and stared at Felix without speaking, and then it was a sort of soliloquy. 'To think of poor dear Master Eddard's son being come to that! and he looking a dozen times more like a clergyman and a gentleman than ever ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... graveyard in his sleigh, the bells jingling too merrily by far, I thought; and then to a marble-cutter from whom I bought a headstone to be put up in the spring. I worked out an epitaph which Doctor Mix, who seemed to see through the case pretty well, put into good language, reading as follows: "Here lies the body of Mary Brouwer Vandemark, born in Ulster County, New York, ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... together in other days, I doing all the talking, and he no less silent than usual there in his holy grave. We had never quarreled as man and wife, because he would not do his part of the contending. I untied my bonnet strings, took it off and laid it on the grass, sat down by his headstone and cried—not so much for him as for fear he would not ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... a boy will show you his grave. It is back of the town near a little bridge that spans a mangrove swamp. A plain slab of wood stands at its head. Some one has burned upon the headstone with ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... and red-cheek'd; Robin was violent, And she was crafty—a sweet violence, And a sweet craft. I would I were a milkmaid, To sing, love, marry, churn, brew, bake, and die, Then have my simple headstone by the church, And all things lived and ended honestly. I could not if I would. I am Harry's daughter: Gardiner would have my head. They are not sweet, The violence and the craft that do divide The world ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... been lifted, in readiness for its coming. It was something to think that his sister Mabel, who died in her flower, was lying in a sunny churchyard where a brook rippled and sparkled in the daylight and waving trees whispered together all night long; where flowers might nestle close to the headstone, and moon and stars shed their peace upon it, and morning birds ...
— Hans Brinker - or The Silver Skates • Mary Mapes Dodge
... Inaugural Address, he of a sudden became the object of an equally blind devotion; and was, often by the very men who had tried and condemned him for blasphemy, as senselessly credited with essential orthodoxy. "The stone which the builders rejected became the headstone of the corner," the terror of the pulpit its text. Carlyle's decease was marked by a dirge of rhapsodists whose measureless acclamations stifled the voice of sober criticism. In the realm of contemporary English prose he has left ...
— Thomas Carlyle - Biography • John Nichol
... and passed me as I stood by the churchyard gate, and up towards the church; but sudden in the path he stopped short, his eyes seeming starting out of his head as he looked at Ellen's grave—not that he could see her name, the headstone being turned the other way,—and he put his hands before his eyes and stood still a-trembling, like a rabbit when the dogs are on it, and it can't find no way out. Then he cried out, 'No, no, cover her face, for God's sake!' and crouched down ...
— In Homespun • Edith Nesbit
... dew was on the grass, he made his way into the churchyard, and sought about for Geoffry's grave. He discovered it in a corner, marked by a plain headstone and shaded by an elder bush. It was the stone Geoffry had raised in memory of his Elizabeth, and below her name his was inscribed, with the date of his death. The churchyard was all neatly kept—this grave not more neatly than the others. Mrs. Carnegie's affections had flowed into other channels, ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... his fortune, drove him to dissipation, and when he was dying he came back to Nora, who received him cordially, attended him to the end, and cheered his last hours by singing his own songs to him. Then she raised a headstone recounting his virtues, which were quite numerous, and refraining from any reference to those peculiarities which had caused him ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... irritation get the better of me. Be that as it may, Oppenstedt was deaf to reason and protested with undiminished vehemence that he refused to ally himself with the family of a murderer. Indeed, so ridiculous did he get on the subject that he sent to Sydney for a tombstone (I daren't write headstone, though it was one, about the size of a silk hat) and put it behind the bakery above the spot where O's head was buried in ...
— Wild Justice: Stories of the South Seas • Lloyd Osbourne
... and Bolivia; the church which Defoe saw had disappeared, having since been destroyed by fire and rebuilt in 1763. We did not go inside, but in walking through the churchyard we casually came upon an ordinary headstone on which was an inscription to the effect that the stone marked the resting-place of Henry Trengrouse (1772-1854), who, being "profoundly impressed by the great loss of life by shipwreck, had devoted the greater portion of his life and means to the invention and design of the rocket apparatus ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... their ways home. But she turned at the door, and went into the churchyard; to Peter's grave. Poor as she was, she had given him a slab and a headstone. She sat down on the slab, and kissed it. Then threw her apron over her head that no one might distinguish her ...
— The Cloister and the Hearth • Charles Reade
... looked around, but there was no one in sight. On the other side of a holly bush, however, a number of just such roses lay on a grave. Rosalind walked over and stooped to read the name on the low headstone. "Robert Ellis Fair," she repeated half aloud as she laid her rose ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... was covered by a pyramidal mound of sandy earth with a piece of twig stuck in it. Sometimes a tree had been planted and had grown. A child's grave had some tiny bowls of food and a clay doll before a little headstone. By way of shelter for these offerings there was hung on the headstone a peasant's wide straw hat. A large beehive-shaped bamboo basket over another grave was a reminder of the time when a grave needed such protection in order to save the ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... mean, then, that we should look ahead, and see nothing before us but the grave—the end of all? [Draw the grave, the headstone, and the word, "Death," with ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... the verse, and to her surprise her aunt answered it with, "'Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying grace! grace unto it.'" Not a word did she offer in explanation; she only twitched the horse's head more emphatically, and did not speak again until she ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... eight o'clock on a Tuesday morning; nevertheless, the church-bell was going, and the door was open as if for prayer. I was a little surprised at this, but having visited the grave where my father and mother lay, and then passed on to the simple headstone which marked the resting place of John Thornton and his wife, I brushed through the docks and nettles, towards the lychgate, in the shadow of which stood the clergyman, a gentlemanly looking young man, talking to a very aged woman ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... had chosen for her chief; they jeered at his large hands, and long feet, and ungainly stature; and the British secretary of state for foreign affairs made haste to send word through the places of Europe that the great republic was in its agony; that the republic was no more; that a headstone was all that remained due by the law of nations to "the late Union." But it is written, "Let the dead bury their dead"; they may not bury the living. Let the dead bury their dead; let a bill of reform remove the worn-out government of a class, and infuse new life into the British constitution ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... the old church and the tomb within, so I went across after leaving you and wandered about the churchyard. Close beside the corner of the north transept was the empty grave, as you know, and beside it a quaint old headstone with an interesting coat-of-arms upon it. I knelt down and tried to decipher ...
— Border Ghost Stories • Howard Pease
... completely altered my intentions. The finger of God is in it. He has not brought us together thus strangely, except to serve some purpose of His own. I think I see that purpose. 'The stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes,'" he quoted unctiously. "I am convinced that it is a waste of good material to crush you; therefore I desire to effect a consolidation with you, buy all the other copper interests of any importance ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... and exquisite child, drew a plan for a headstone on the grave of a favorite terrier, and she had in it the words "WHO died" on such a day; the older and more worldly-minded painter put in "WHICH;" and my friend and "Bossy's" said to me, with some displeasure, as we were examining the monuments, "Wasn't he a Who as much as they?" ...
— Spare Hours • John Brown
... wretches a trick," said he. "Go to the cemetery, buy a grave for five years at Pere-Lachaise, and arrange with the Church and the undertaker to have a third-class funeral. If the daughters and their husbands decline to repay you, you can carve this on the headstone—'Here lies M. Goriot, father of the Comtesse de Restaud and the Baronne de Nucingen, interred at the expense of ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... sweet young lady, as died of grief for the loss of her little boy. There it is," continued he, pointing with his finger; "the white peacock is now sitting on the headstone of the grave, and the little boy ...
— Frank Mildmay • Captain Frederick Marryat
... of surprise. It was away down in the lower corner where there were no plots. It was shut off from the others by a growth of young poplars and was sunken and overgrown with blueberry shrubs. There was no headstone, and it looked dismally neglected. Freda felt a sympathy for it. She had no grave, and this grave had nobody to tend ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... a gigantic rock fourteen hundred feet high that juts out into the ocean and the great waves that continually lash against it make it perhaps the most dreaded spot by sailors in all the trade routes of the world. On all sides are wrecked vessels and this rock has been named the Giant Headstone in ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... had often told him. Mark walked round the stone walls that held up the little churchyard and, entering by a gate on the farther side, he looked at the headstones and admired the feathery tamarisks that waved over the tombs. He was reading an inscription more legible than most on a headstone of highly polished granite, when he heard a ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... the woe! For in the sunlight the shadows grow Over the new name on the door, Over the face unseen before. Yet who shall number, by any art, The chasms that keep so wide apart The dancing step and the weary heart? Oh, who shall guess that the polished wall Is a headstone ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... among the trees was not more than thirty paces across. At one side was a little knoll—a natural hillock, bare of shrubbery but covered with wild grass, and on this, standing out of the grass, the headstone of a grave! ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... Yet they say she mourned him duly, and set a proper headstone at his grave. But, for my own part, I have no faith in that affection which will splinter a loving heart every day of its life, and yet, when it has ceased to beat, will make atonement with an idle swash ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... can put out of your mouth can do me any injury at all. Oh, Catherine, it is best for me go hang myself out of a tree, and my carcass to be torn by savage dogs that went famished through a great length of time, and my bones left without a token or a flag or a headstone, and my name that was up at one time to be forgotten out of ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... indeed, political equality is a stumbling block; for the confederate constitution bases itself openly and unblushingly on the principle of property in man. It has been blasphemously announced that this is the stone which the builders of our government refused, and that it is now become the headstone of the corner of a divinely instituted nation. The blasphemy that hesitated not to declare John Brown equal with Jesus Christ, is hardly worse than this; for John Brown was, at least, an honest fanatic. The traitorous chiefs of the Southern rebellion are ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... for business meeting, she was rigidly barred out. She would take her children and walk about in the grave-yard outside while she waited for Daniel, but, as the graves were all in a row without even a headstone to distinguish them, this was not a very interesting pastime and the wait was long and tedious. When the little girls went with the father they also were shut out of the executive session where such momentous ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 1 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... I must walk out in the air, as I was suffering from a severe headache. I made my way to the church-yard, and sought the graves of my parents; and, seating myself at the headstone of my mother's grave, I remained for a long ...
— The Path of Duty, and Other Stories • H. S. Caswell
... hearth deserted now is found, Or unloved stranger-forms are circling round. In the dear hall, whose sounds were all our own, Are other voices, other accents known; And where our early friends? A starting tear And the rude headstone ...
— Heart Utterances at Various Periods of a Chequered Life. • Eliza Paul Kirkbride Gurney
... that is the pride of all that country-side; and my grandfather's vault at Bow is capable of accommodating eight visitors, while my great-aunt Susan has a brick grave in Finchley Churchyard, with a headstone with a coffee- pot sort of thing in bas-relief upon it, and a six-inch best white stone coping all the way round, that cost pounds. When I want graves, it is to those places that I go and revel. I do not want other folk's. When ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... periods of his life. Mine host said that visitors from every land were as much interested in this room as in Shakespeare's birth-place. The remark may have been intensified to flatter an American visitor, but there are few names dearer to the Anglo-Saxon race than that on the plain headstone in the burial-yard of Sleepy Hollow. Sunnyside is scarcely visible to the Day Line tourist. A little gleam of color here and there amid the trees, close to the river bank, near a small boat-house, merely indicates its location; and the traveler by train has only a hurried glimpse, as ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... stock is this one," said the stone-cutter, going into a shed. "Here's a marble headstone beautifully crocketed, with medallions beneath of typical subjects; here's the footstone after the same pattern, and here's the coping to enclose the grave. The polishing alone of the set cost me eleven pounds—the slabs are the best of ...
— Far from the Madding Crowd • Thomas Hardy
... the north part of the town—the first cemetery in the region—is a headstone marking the grave of a pious negro slave, on which is rudely ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... and she pointed to the rising mound at her feet. Silently we bent over and reverently laid the lilies and forget-me-nots under the simple headstone. ...
— The Romance of an Old Fool • Roswell Field
... under the bridges before Kano Ugichi returns to the bosom of his family," Conway murmured sympathetically. "He's so badly spoiled, Nick, we've decided to call him a total loss and not put up any headstone to his memory. It is Farrel's wish that the matter be ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... lilies-of-the-valley perfume the air, and palm-branches lie on the new-made grave, above the flowers. I treasure an ivy leaf or two, given by the workwoman, and pick up a cone which has just fallen from a fir-tree upon the grave of Alexander, as I read the inscription on his headstone: "Thou too wilt at last come to the grave; how art thou preparing?" This simple epitaph, with name and age, is all, except his earthly work, that speaks for him who was once, after Napoleon Bonaparte, the most famous man in Europe, ...
— In and Around Berlin • Minerva Brace Norton
... any one who had ever had the privilege of knowing him in the faulty flesh. She eliminated all his bad qualities, and projected from her imagination a Mr. O'Rourke as he ought to have been—a species of seraphic being mixed up in some way with a violin; and to this ideal she erected a costly headstone in the suburban cemetery. "It would be a proud day for Larry," observed Margaret contemplatively, "if he could rest his oi on the illegant monumint I 've put up to him." If Mr. O'Rourke could have read the inscription on it, ...
— A Rivermouth Romance • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... have reason," he remarked. "Why should you believe me? Come to Cruta, and you will see for yourself. You can see the headstone at the foot of the grave: 'Sacred to the memory of Marie, faithful servant of Irene of Cruta.' You can see the doctor who attended her and your wife at the same time! Better still, you can see your wife and your infant son! What ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... said emphatically, "and you mustn't say it. Always speak well of the dead." And, as they couldn't honestly do that, they obeyed him and left Mr. Jinks in his unhonoured grave, with a broken wheel-barrow for a headstone and a mass of wire-netting to make resurrection difficult. In order to get the disagreeable epitaph out of their minds Uncle Felix substituted a kinder and gentler one, and made them ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... lumpy when she puts them on. Boys giggle and call names when she goes out. And so, outcast, she comes here to the cemetery to dream of a day when something cool and pretty will belong to her. A headstone, perhaps a stately one with a figure above it. It will stand over her. She will be dead then and unable to enjoy it. But now she is alive. Now she can think of how pretty the stone will look and thus enjoy it in advance. ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... window, triple lancet, is to the memory of Edwards Marjoribanks of the Hall (d. 1879) and his wife. Silas Titus, whose name is remembered for his supposed authorship of the notorious pamphlet Killing noe Murder, was born at Bushey and buried in this church; there is a headstone to his daughter in ...
— Hertfordshire • Herbert W Tompkins
... and passing down the yard, I came to a grave the headstone of which had fallen, and was broken. I turned the two pieces over, and read: "To the memory of Eliza ——." And is this, thought I, the end of the only record of the dear friend of my boyhood; the ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... a mound in sweet Auburn Where a little headstone stood; How the flakes were folding it gently, As did robins the babes in ...
— Four Famous American Writers: Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, • Sherwin Cody
... staircases which led to the galleries were outside, at each end of the building, and the irregular roof and worn stone steps looked grey and stained by time and weather. The grassy hillocks, each with a little upright headstone, were shaded by a grand old wych-elm. A lilac-bush or two, a white rose-tree, and a few laburnums, all old and gnarled enough, were planted round the chapel yard; and the casement windows of the chapel were made of heavy-leaded, diamond-shaped panes, almost covered ...
— Ruth • Elizabeth Cleghorn Gaskell
... come not, as aforetime, to the headstone every day, And I, who died, I do not chide because, my friend, you play; Only, in playing, think of him who once was kind and dear, And, if you see a beauteous thing, just ...
— Ionica • William Cory (AKA William Johnson)
... book, a little work-box, a little set of tables and weights and measures, and a little woman all in one. She could write a little essay on any subject exactly a slate long, and strictly according to rule. If Mr. Bradley Headstone had proposed marriage to her, she would certainly have replied 'yes,' for she loved him;" but Mr. Headstone did not love Miss Peecher—he loved Lizzie Hexam, and had no love to spare for any other woman.—C. Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... bring flowers to this lonely grave, Some facts on its headstone we wish to engrave; If this mound could speak no doubt it would tell Bill Sherman was right when he said, 'War is Hell.' He charged on two pickets whose names are below; They took him for niggers,—poor wronged buffalo. As to the way ...
— The Woman with a Stone Heart - A Romance of the Philippine War • Oscar William Coursey
... friends, and the municipal honours accorded to him at his funeral, when the mayor and council, the volunteers and chief inhabitants of King William's Town (every window shuttered) followed him to the grave, where Archdeacon Kitton read the solemn service; and some months after, a marble headstone was placed over his remains. His two brothers have written some touching stanzas to his ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... toe of his sea-boot a crumbling grave which had never been distinguished by a headstone. The grass grew high all over Farlingford churchyard, almost hiding the mounds where the forefathers slept side by side with the nameless "wash-ups," to whom they had extended a ...
— The Last Hope • Henry Seton Merriman
... read his words, She rose in haste, and to her chamber went, And shut the door; nor if, when she came forth, A dawn of holier purpose gleamed across The sadness of her brow. But this I know, That, on a warm autumnal afternoon, When headstone-shadows crossed three neighbour graves, And, like an ended prayer, the empty church Stood in the sunshine, or a cenotaph, A little boy, who watched a cow near by Gather her milk where alms of clover-fields Lay scattered on the sides ...
— The Poetical Works of George MacDonald in Two Volumes, Volume I • George MacDonald
... gravity of his words and manner, Hannah allowed him to draw her out of the house and up the hill behind it to Nora's grave at the foot of the old oak tree. It was a fine, bright, starlight night, and the rough headstone, rudely fashioned and set up by the professor, gleamed whitely out from ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... Martin-le-Grand ("a small deserted cemetery in an obscure lane behind [i.e. above] the market"). See note by Charles De la Pryme, Notes and Queries, 1854, Series I. vol. x. p. 378. There is a tablet to his memory on the south wall of St. Mary's Church, and the present headstone in the graveyard (it was a "plain headstone" in 1816) bears the ...
— The Works of Lord Byron, Volume 4 • Lord Byron
... of course on foot, and stood a long while and ponder'd. They lie close together in a pleasant wooded spot well up the cemetery hill, "Sleepy Hollow." The flat surface of the first was densely cover'd by myrtle, with a border of arbor-vitae, and the other had a brown headstone, moderately elaborate, with inscriptions. By Henry's side lies his brother John, of whom much was expected, but he died young. Then to Walden pond, that beautiful embower'd sheet of water, and spent over an hour there. ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... there in the dark, and the roar Of the guns, and the shrilling cheers, and the knowledge that filled your heart That there was a victory making and you must do your part, But—there's his grave in the orchard where the headstone glimmers white: We could see it, we thought, from our window even on the darkest night; It is set there for a sign that what one lad could do Would be done by a hundred hundred lads whose hearts were stout and true. And when in the time of trial ...
— Lundy's Lane and Other Poems • Duncan Campbell Scott
... belonging to the parish of St. George's, Hanover Square, situated in the Bayswater Road. His funeral was "attended only by two gentlemen in a mourning coach, no bell tolling;" and his grave has been described as "distinguished by a plain headstone, set up with an unsuitable inscription, by a tippling fraternity of Freemasons." In 1761, long before his death, was published a satire on the tendencies of his writings, mixed with a good deal of personal censure, in a pamphlet entitled "A ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli
... replaced by a curious inertia. Both his mind and his body felt tired and resigned. The gravestones suggested death, the end of the early hopes, aspirations, yearnings and despairs of men. A few bones and a headstone—to that he was traveling. And yet all through the night he had been on fire with longing, and with a fear that had seemed almost red hot. Now he thought he perhaps understood the fatalism of the Turk. Whatever must be must be. All was written surely from the beginning. ...
— In the Wilderness • Robert Hichens
... to the headstone bare, And signs it with a paraph wild, And hangs a wreath of bones to glare Upon ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... Mausoleum Club had wandered into such places as Cahoga County that they did not know that there was nothing strange in what Tomlinson said. His father was buried there, on the farm itself, in a grave overgrown with raspberry bushes, and with a wooden headstone encompassed by a square of cedar rails, and slept as many another pioneer of Cahoga ...
— Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich • Stephen Leacock
... Irvine were soon apparent in that event of which he speaks in his Epistle to John Rankine with such unbecoming levity. In the Chronological Edition of his works it is painful to read on one page the pathetic lines which he engraved on his father's headstone, and a few pages on, written almost at the same time, the epistle above alluded to, and other poems in the same strain, in which the defiant poet glories in his shame. It was well for the old man that he was laid in Alloway Kirkyard ...
— Robert Burns • Principal Shairp
... down the avenue at Orley Farm (where Anthony Trollope's sad boyhood was passed), or take the Northwick Walk, which winds through meadows to the Bridge, or visit John Lyon's farm at Preston, or, getting signed for Bill, attempt a longer ramble to Ruislip Reservoir, or Oxhey Wood, or Headstone with its moated grange, or Horsington Hill with its long-stretching view ...
— The Hill - A Romance of Friendship • Horace Annesley Vachell
... of saying that there was an omission of three words in the epitaph quoted on a former page (vol. i. p. 120). The headstone at the grave in Kensal-green bears this inscription: "Young, beautiful, and good, God in His mercy numbered her among His angels at the early ...
— The Life of Charles Dickens, Vol. I-III, Complete • John Forster
... human memorial more than twenty years old, except a tree! And memorable was the ceremony whereby, a few years since, the Historical Society celebrated the bicentennial birthday of Bradford, the old colonial printer, by renewing his headstone. At noonday, when the life-tide was at flood, in lovely May weather, a barrier was stretched across Broadway; and there, at the head of eager gold-worshipping Wall Street, in the heart of the bustling, trafficking ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various
... let me say that a bad temper is an affliction, whoever owns it, and shortening to life. I don't know what your opinion may be: but my grandfather was parish constable in these parts for forty-seven years, and you'll find it on his headstone in Manaccan churchyard that he never had a cross word for man, woman, or child. He took no credit for it: it ran in the family, and to this day we're all ...
— News from the Duchy • Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch
... a very brief inscription on this modest headstone; but it was enough to tell me whose ashes lay buried under the spot on which ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... out," said Cal, and led them a little distance up the slope, to a level spot in the shadow of a huge, gray bowlder. "That's his headstone," he said, soberly. "The poor devil won't be cheated out uh that, if we can't mark it with his name. It'll last as long as ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... her beside the little brother that had died so long before, and ordered a headstone with some lines which they had found in Australia, written ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... noon when he beheld a certain lonely church where many a green mound and mossy headstone marked the resting-place of those that sleep awhile. And here, beside the weather-worn porch, were the stocks, that "place of thought" where Viscount Devenham had sat in solitary, though dignified meditation. A glance, a smile, and Barnabas was past, and galloping ...
— The Amateur Gentleman • Jeffery Farnol et al
... seventh and beyond, with the glories that stream from it. Hold fast by the Cross, and the more fully, believingly, joyously, unfalteringly, we recognise in it the foundation of our salvation, the more gladly, clearly, operatively, shall we cherish the hope that 'the headstone shall be brought forth with shoutings,' and that the imperfect symbolical communion of earth will grow and greaten into complete and real union in ...
— Expositions of Holy Scripture - St. Matthew Chaps. IX to XXVIII • Alexander Maclaren
... who the stranger was, but as sufficient money had been found on him to pay the cost of the burial, his corpse was placed in Mancetter Churchyard, and as his name was unknown, some mysterious initials, of which no one now living knew the meaning, appeared on the headstone. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... of the churchyard gates, and, stepping across the somewhat untidily kept graves, stood before an uneven mound, surrounded by a very old mossgrown headstone. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... have been Mrs. Buchanan, it was this clerical busybody who was responsible for the inscription on Lola's headstone: ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... have asked you to bury me in that pit at the top of Quill's Window,—that it was my whim, if you like. Close it up after you have placed me there and cover it with great rocks, so that Edward and I may never be disturbed. I want no headstone, no epitaph. Just the stones as ...
— Quill's Window • George Barr McCutcheon
... least save them from the horrible fate that he knew awaited them. This resolve involved his death, for he was no match for the men he was contending against. No grave was ever dug for his remains, and no headstone tells the story of his noble resolution and his intrepid effort to ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... their gray eyebrows all the time of the sermon—intelligently without doubt, but whether sympathetically or otherwise I could not determine. And indeed I hardly know yet. My vestry door opened upon a little group of graves, simple and green, without headstone or slab; poor graves, the memory of whose occupants no one had cared to preserve. Good men must have preceded me here, else the poor would not have lain so near the chancel and the vestry-door. All about and beyond were stones, with here and there a monument; for mine ...
— Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood • George MacDonald
... gently. "Give the lad his due. He was brave that one time. He saved all those lives as it is chiseled on his headstone. It is better he should be remembered for the best act in his life than for the worst one. A man's measure should be taken when he's stretched up to his full height, just as far as he can lift up his head; not when he's stooped to the lowest. It's only fair to judge either the ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... the good Sir Simon live and labor to realize these views. But already in a green corner of the pleasant churchyard of Rockville may be read this inscription on a marble headstone:—"Sacred to the memory of Jane Deg, the mother of Sir Simon Degge, Bart., of Rockville. This stone is erected in honor of the best of Mothers by the ...
— International Miscellany of Literature, Art and Science, Vol. 1, - No. 3, Oct. 1, 1850 • Various
... have been watching winds its way, as human processions are apt to do, to the old graveyard. Most of the original settlers are buried here, although not a few were buried on their own land, according to the common custom. Probably this ancient burying ground, with its oldest headstone of 1663, has never been particularly attractive. The Puritans did not decorate their graveyards in any way. Fearing that prayers or sermons would encourage the "superstitions" of the Roman Catholic Church, they shunned any ritual ...
— The Old Coast Road - From Boston to Plymouth • Agnes Rothery
... they are unto us matter of great praise and hearty thanksgiving unto GOD, so also an evidence of the stedfastness of many in England, and a token for good, and a wide door of hope that the Lord will perfect his Work and bring forth the headstone of his House in that Land. It shall be the wisdom of each Nation to keep the golden path of truth and righteousnesse betwixt the crooked wayes of Malignants upon the one hand and Secteries upon the other, and for each of the Nations ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... horse to a tree, and walked up behind the house, where, under the old elm, he saw the low headstone gleaming dimly in ...
— Self-Raised • Emma Dorothy Eliza Nevitte Southworth
... some few faculties and energy, moved on beyond the church, till he came to the white coral headstone, where he stood still. ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... leans. Melody is very fond of white. It feels smoother than colors, she always says; and she would wear it constantly if it did not make too much washing. One arm is thrown over the curve of the headstone, while with the other hand she follows the worn letters of the inscription, which surely no other fingers were ...
— Melody - The Story of a Child • Laura E. Richards
... should stop it, —he did n't seem to get the worth of his money out of it. And old man Tatem was a thrifty and provident man. On the hearth in this best room—as ornaments or memento mori were a couple of marble gravestones, a short headstone and foot-stone, mounted on bases and ready for use, except the lettering. These may not have been so mournful and significant as they looked, nor the evidence of simple, humble faith; they may have been taken for debt. But as parlor ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner
... on him, or any of his name;" and that for the precluding of such animadversions it might behove them to provide "a buryin'" not merely decent but "very respectable whatever," and to expend the remainder of Mr. Polymathers's personality upon a headstone for his grave, and Masses for his soul. To set against these apprehensions were Mr. Polymathers's wishes and Nicholas's interests; and the longer the old man balanced them in his mind, the more perplexing became their tremulous poise. ...
— Strangers at Lisconnel • Barlow Jane
... At my headstone, kindly kneeling, May I beg a votive tear? Woman, with her pure appealing, Is my angel at the bier. Let me have but one such linger, Praying Christ to help and save, Let me have but one dear finger Place a chaplet on ...
— Soldier Songs and Love Songs • A.H. Laidlaw
... mercy, so they are its last gift to us: when all other service is vain, from plant and tree, the soft mosses and gray lichen take up their watch by the headstone. The woods, the blossoms, the gift-bearing grasses, have done their parts for a time; but these do service for ever. Trees for the builder's yard, flowers for the bride's chamber, corn for the granary, moss ...
— Frondes Agrestes - Readings in 'Modern Painters' • John Ruskin
... drowsing cattle, waste, and hillock anew, dragged themselves past, and the skewbald was labouring in the deep sand of the Indus-ford. Tallantire was conscious of no distinct thought till the nose of the dawdling ferry-boat grounded on the farther side, and his horse shied snorting at the white headstone of Orde's grave. Then he uncovered, and shouted that the dead might hear, 'They're out, old man! Wish me luck.' In the chill of the dawn he was hammering with a stirrup-iron at the gate of Fort Ziar, where fifty sabres ...
— Life's Handicap • Rudyard Kipling
... churchyard," stated Mr. Queed. "I was there just ahead of you. I was struck with that motto or text on the headstone, and shall look it up when I get home. I have been making a more careful study of your Bible this autumn and have found it exceptionally interesting. You, I suppose, subscribe to all the tenets of ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... struggle. That dinted army sabre, with a bit of faded crepe knotted at its hilt, which hangs over the mantel-piece of the "best room" of many a town and country house in these States, is one; and the graven headstone of the fallen hero is another. The old swords will be treasured and handed down from generation to generation as priceless heirlooms, and with them, let us trust, will be cherished the custom of dressing with annual flowers ...
— Ponkapog Papers • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... are tossed into his tomb to satisfy the surly boatman of the Styx. Lingeringly is the last look taken of the familiar countenance, as the procession passes slowly around the tomb; and the moaning is made,—a sound of groans going up to the seventh heavens,—and the earth is thrown in, and the headstone with epitaph placed duly to hallow the grave of the dead. Or if, according to the custom of his native land, the body of Euclid is committed to the funeral flames, the pyre, duly prepared with combustibles, is made the centre of the ring; a ponderous jar of turpentine ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... climbed the little hill out of the wash to the spot where, with Texas and Pat, he had rendered the last possible service to the unknown woman, who had given her life for the life of the child—the child that was his but not his. Long ago he had marked the grave with a simple headstone bearing the only name possible—the one word: "Mother"—and the date of ...
— The Winning of Barbara Worth • Harold B Wright
... I had a marble headstone put on her grave, which was enclosed with a fence, and last fall I saw it there although buried in weeds. A few weeks ago a lady friend asked me if my mother's name was Jane; for that she had, in walking through the cemetery, come across a stone which must ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... not a monument fit for a poet. There is nothing airy or graceful about it,—and, indeed, there cannot he many men so solid and matter-of-fact as to deserve a tomb like that. Wordsworth's grave is much better, with only a simple headstone, and the grass growing over his mortality, which, for a thousand years, at least, it never can over Southey's. Most of the monuments are of this same black slate, and some erect headstones are curiously sculptured, and seem to have ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... their being shut up here, Andrew Black stood one afternoon leaning against the headstone of a grave on which Quentin Dick and Will Wallace were seated. It had been raining, and the grass and their garments were very wet. A leaden sky overhead seemed to have deepened their despair, for they remained silent for an ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... little brick cottage caught our attention—men can't run arm in arm anyway. We forgot our errand of mercy and stood still with open mouths looking in at the window at little Jenny Wren hard at work dressing her dolls and stopping now and then to stab the air with her needle. Bradley Headstone and Charlie and Lizzie Hexam came in, and we then passed on, not wishing ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great, Vol. 1 of 14 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Good Men and Great • Elbert Hubbard
... Hexam's brother and a friend, Bradley Headstone, paid their first visit to the house on Church Street, they knocked at the door, which promptly opened and disclosed a child—a dwarf, a girl—sitting on a little, low, old-fashioned arm-chair, which had a kind of ...
— Ten Girls from Dickens • Kate Dickinson Sweetser
... that a body had been washed ashore at Grave Point—the place where we bathed. We bathed there no more! How well I remember the funeral, and what a piteous sight it was afterwards to see his familiar name on a small headstone in ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... their reward," and the like. No doubt this is true; if not, then life is a mockery, and hope a lie. But the future, with all our faith, is vague and uncertain. It lies before us like one of those unidentified heroes, hidden from sight, deep-buried, mysterious, its headstone lettered "Unknown." Will it ever rise? Through trouble, toils, and privations,—not insensible to danger, but braving it,—these men—and not these only, but the uncounted thousands represented by these—confronted, for their country's sake, that awful uncertainty. Did they believe in your better ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 16, No. 97, November, 1865 • Various
... lighting up the gravestones, and the path, and the front of the building. Suddenly Mr. Melbury paused, turned ill upon the grass, and approached a particular headstone, where he read, "In memory of John Winterborne," with the subjoined date and age. It was the grave ...
— The Woodlanders • Thomas Hardy
... ill in March; not with a mysterious and romantic malady, but with grippe, which, she wrote Carl, made her hate the human race, New York, charity, and Shakespeare. She could not decide whether to go to Europe, or to die in a swoon and be buried under a mossy headstone. ...
— The Trail of the Hawk - A Comedy of the Seriousness of Life • Sinclair Lewis
... line of priests. On the little slab that marked his resting-place no mention was made of the mighty work he had done for truth. There were fears that when the character of his book was known, the grave of Copernicus would not remain undisturbed, and so the inscription on the headstone was simply this: "I ask not the grace accorded to Paul; not that given to Peter; give me only the favor which Thou didst show to the ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... to the point, that youth comes first. And the scale fairly kicks the beam, if you go on to add that age, in a majority of cases, never comes at all. Disease and accident make short work of even the most prosperous persons; death costs nothing, and the expense of a headstone is an inconsiderable trifle to the happy heir. To be suddenly snuffed out in the middle of ambitious schemes, is tragical enough at best; but when a man has been grudging himself his own life in the meanwhile, and saving up everything for the festival that was never to be, it becomes that hysterically ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... her sister's, but faint with a nameless terror. Her most peaceful moments were those in which she managed to convince herself that Evelina was dead. She thought of her then, mournfully but more calmly, as thrust away under the neglected mound of some unknown cemetery, where no headstone marked her name, no mourner with flowers for another grave paused in pity to lay a blossom on hers. But this vision did not often give Ann Eliza its negative relief; and always, beneath its hazy lines, lurked the dark ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... toward the erection of a monument to the memory of their beloved benefactor. Already one dear young servant had gathered, for the purpose, over twenty pounds. In conformity with the known wishes of his father-in-law that only the simplest headstone be placed over his remains, Mr. Wright thought necessary to check the inflow of such gifts, the sum in ...
— George Muller of Bristol - His Witness to a Prayer-Hearing God • Arthur T. Pierson
... devotion as the grognards of the Guard had in the case of the Great Emperor. There were some who feared that in Roberts's case, as in so many more, the donga and kopje of South Africa might form the grave and headstone of a military reputation, but far from this being so he consistently showed a wide sweep of strategy and a power of conceiving the effect of scattered movements over a great extent of country which have surprised his warmest admirers. In the second week of February his dispositions ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle
... no descendants, and his heirs were too intent on being in at the death to care for his memory. They neither preserved the data of his life, nor over his grave placed a headstone. The monument that now marks his resting-place was recently erected by the State of Massachusetts. He was buried in the Old Granary Burying-Ground, on Tremont Street, and only a step from his grave ...
— Little Journeys To the Homes of the Great, Volume 3 (of 14) • Elbert Hubbard
... a tender sentiment to be chiseled on the headstone of her husband's grave. The exact wording ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... garments. Wimp crept up behind her, but she paid no heed to him. Her eyes were lowered to the grave, which seemed to be drawing them towards it by some strange morbid fascination. His eyes followed hers. The simple headstone bore ...
— The Grey Wig: Stories and Novelettes • Israel Zangwill
... verified. As they rode along they constantly came upon bodies of men and women, whose horses had given out, or who had been shot while fleeing for life. In every case the poor fugitives had been scalped and mutilated. They were gathered up and tenderly buried, with no headstone to mark their remains, there to sleep until the last ...
— The Cave in the Mountain • Lieut. R. H. Jayne
... nigh to seventy-six, one way or t'other. Her an' Mrs. Mary Ann Chick was same year's child'n, and Peggy knows I know it, an' two or three times when we've be'n in the buryin'-ground where Mary Ann lays an' has her dates right on her headstone, I couldn't bring Peggy to take no sort o' notice. I will say she makes, at times, a convenience of being upsighted. But there, I feel for her,—everybody does; it keeps her stubbin' an' trippin' against everything, beakin' and gazin' up the way she ...
— A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches • Sarah Orne Jewett
... "Wunderhuebsch! Ganz malerisch!" fell on her ear. She looked more closely at the little group. A gentleman in a long linen duster, with a loosely rolled umbrella under his arm, was gazing at the church most earnestly. He stepped back to get a better view, and colliding with a mossy headstone, turned and bowed to it politely with an apology. The little woman at his side paid no attention to him or to the guide, but followed with her eyes a plump young girl in a sailor-suit, who ...
— The Wide Awake Girls in Winsted • Katharine Ellis Barrett
... night could I make out all the story, though it was not difficult to define its essential tragedy, and later on a gossip in the neighborhood and a headstone in the churchyard told me the rest. The unquiet young soul that had sung so wistfully to and fro the orchard was my landlord's daughter. She was the only child of her parents, a beautiful, willful girl, exotically unlike those from whom she was sprung and among whom she lived with ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... remarkable visitors desirous of immortality, here and there about the edifice, but Robert the builder—or at least the Master of building, cut his on no stone of it. Only when, after his death, the headstone had been brought forth with shouting, Grace unto it, this following legend was written, recording all who had part or lot in the labour, within the middle of the labyrinth then inlaid in the pavement ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... the fowls, together with the greater part of the household furniture, were scattered over the neighborhood; the smoke was gone from the chimney, and the windows were curtainless; and the grave of John, with a modest but decent headstone, and a rose-bush newly planted beside it, was left to the care of strangers. The last visits had been paid, and the last good-byes and good wishes exchanged; and the widow and her younger children were far on their journey,—Hobert remaining ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various
... outside the church-door; he said something; the bride, in her superhuman happiness, did not hear it; but she felt what it was. He wished her to look at Ole Haugen's grave, how richly clad in flowers it lay to-day. She looked, and they passed out almost touching his headstone; the ...
— The Bridal March; One Day • Bjornstjerne Bjornson
... probably at no very distant day) be my final resting-place after my mortal pilgrimage. [Note: Note, by Mr Jedediah Cleishbotham.—That I kept my plight in this melancholy matter with my deceased and lamented friend, appeareth from a handsome headstone, erected at my proper charges in this spot, bearing the name and calling of Peter Pattieson, with the date of his nativity and sepulture; together also with a testimony of his merits, attested by myself, as his superior and ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... moonbeams shone under the moss-draped branches of a live oak in a cemetery. They brought out in snowy whiteness a small headstone on which were engraved the words, "Yes, Vilet." Sitting by the grave and leaning his head against the stone was Kern Watson, but his calm, strong face was turned heavenward where his little girl waited ...
— The Earth Trembled • E.P. Roe
... their abodes—to the abodes of men and women like ourselves. My hopes and my imagination ran riot in the few yards I had to cover to reach that lonely grave and stoop that I might read the rude characters scratched upon the simple headstone. This is what ...
— The Land That Time Forgot • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... had exalted the character of his native land, and resounded across the waters of the Atlantic. Philosophers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poets slept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument, and some beneath the simple headstone. But the political intrigue, the dream of science, the historical research, the ravishing harmony of sound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre—where are they? With the living, and not with ...
— Seeing Europe with Famous Authors, Volume 3 • Various
... charms upon his memory. Job had been twenty-three years old when the doctor handed him over to his wife; and, as if to prove his relationship to the family, and to Aunt Jane in particular, he had never advanced a year in age since then, but, long, long afterwards, his headstone bore the legend: ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... storage vaults I visit I can only say what is it Makes poor mortals fill their systems with such stuff? Now, for breakfast, prunes are dandy If a stomach pump is handy And your doctor can be found quite soon enough. Eat a plate of fine pigs' knuckles And the headstone cutter chuckles, While the grave digger makes a note upon his cuff. Eat that lovely red bologna And you'll wear a wooden kimona, As your relatives ...
— The Book of Humorous Verse • Various
... cave in. When your body hits it there will be an avalanche—with Mr. Former-sheriff Cullison at the bottom of it. You'll be buried without any funeral expenses, and I reckon your friends will never know where to put the headstone." ...
— Crooked Trails and Straight • William MacLeod Raine
... I would keep Uncle Hezekiah's headstone. In the end we made an inside walk of the collection, for the old cellar had a dirt floor and was not always dry, but we laid them face down. When we had raked and swept, and brushed and put back the articles accepted by the board, and all was trim ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... read between the lines of this letter an affectionate desire to amuse a delicate girl whom the writer loved. The tradition in the Winslow family is that Anna Green Winslow died of consumption at Marshfield in the fall of 1779. There is no town or church record of her death, no known grave or headstone to mark her last resting-place. And to us she is not dead, but lives and speaks—always a loving, endearing little child; not so passionate and gifted and rare a creature as that star among children—Marjorie Fleming—but a natural and homely little flower of New England life; fated never to ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow
... was an enthusiast in his regard for him, bared his head and shed tears over 'the green mound and the scattered gowans,' under which he found his exemplar lying in Canongate Churchyard, and got leave from the managers to put up a headstone at his own cost there" (1750-1774). See Mr. Henley's "Life of Burns" in the Centenary Burns, published by the Messrs. T. C. and E. ...
— The Nuttall Encyclopaedia - Being a Concise and Comprehensive Dictionary of General Knowledge • Edited by Rev. James Wood
... on at Three Meadows until after the bleak and austere little funeral, and long enough to help Angelique soften the harshly new grave with flowers and sturdily started plants, and stopped over at Bath and ordered a quaintly simple headstone which would be ...
— Jane Journeys On • Ruth Comfort Mitchell
... and the roof of old James Lytton's tomb lay with its debris. A tree, which evidently had been torn from the earth and flung from a distance, lay half in and half out of the enclosure. But his mother's headstone, which stood against the north wall, was undisturbed, although the mound above her was flat and sodden. The earth had been strong enough to hold her. Alexander remembered its awful air of finality as it opened to receive her, then closed over her. What he had feared ...
— The Conqueror • Gertrude Franklin Atherton
... anything so clever as that might have been thought to have earned the right to headstone and epitaph in full. Yet his resting-place remains unmarked, and his name apparently dogged him to the ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... Hawthornden was wrong when he called Sleep the child of Silence. Speech begets her as often. But there is no sure refuge save in Death; and when my life is closed untimely, let there be written on my headstone, with impartial application to these Black Brunswickers mounted on the high horse of oratory ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 6, No. 38, December, 1860 • Various
... have a stone inscribed with her name among the rocks from which the sound proceeded. On my return from my walk I recited those verses to Mary, who was then confined with her son Thomas, who died in his seventh year, as recorded on his headstone ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... occupying one-half of it is a grand old boulder with steps leading to the top, where one sees chiseled in large letters, "John Brown, December 2, 1859." At the foot is the grave of the martyr, marked by an old granite headstone which once stood at his grandfather's grave, and on it are inscribed the names of three generations of John Browns. The vandals visiting that sacred spot chipped off bits of the granite until it became necessary to make a cover and padlock it down, so that the farmer unlocks the cap and lifts it ...
— The Life and Work of Susan B. Anthony (Volume 2 of 2) • Ida Husted Harper
... from the rest. On the others only an infrequent trailing vine or a faded bunch of flowers told of loving effort to cover death's nakedness. But this one, which lay in the centre of the enclosure, was covered from headstone to foot-cross with a dense growth of hollyhocks. Their tall shafts were clothed with a luxuriance of vivid red bloom, as if they had sucked into their petals the life blood of the sleeper below. In the level red sun-rays they glowed with ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... aqueduct which Mr. Porter, the learned author of the "Giant Cities of Bashan," quotes as a "traditional memorial of primeval giants"—talibus carduis pascuntur asini!). Nabi Ham measures only 9 ft. 6 in. between headstone and tombstone, being in fact about as long ...
— The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7 • Richard F. Burton
... tenderest woman about whose knees cluster living children, and who has sowed in tears the blessed seed, that in the resurrection-morn shall be gathered in beauteous sheaves of richest recompense—would smile in pitying contempt over the tiny headstone ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... yet, Mr Headstone. I'd rather you didn't see her till she is settled, if it was all the ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... was buried in 1836. The river was a muddy little brook. No grave was to be found, but some little distance away was a burying ground. I went there searching for the grave. I found it not, but lying up against a fence was a headstone having the boy's name on it, and the date ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... is what they will call me now. It is as well perhaps that I am to be buried at sea, else it might plague these Christian gentlemen what legend to inscribe upon my headstone. But you—how come you hither? My bargain with Sir John was that none should be molested, and I cannot think Sir John would ...
— The Sea-Hawk • Raphael Sabatini
... when I stood beside Benjamin Franklin's grave in Christ Church Cemetery, I was shocked to see a German flag marking this honoured resting-place. "Benjamin and Deborah, 1790," was the deeply graven words and, beside them under a kindly elm, the battered headstone of their little four-year-old son, "Francis F.—A delight to all who knew him." Then ...
— The Conquest of America - A Romance of Disaster and Victory • Cleveland Moffett
... house at the foot of the hill where the boy was cultivating his imagination had been built by Captain Rice, and in the family burying-ground in the orchard above it lay the body of this mighty militia-man, and beside him that of Phineas Arms, and on the headstone of each the legend familiar at that period of our national life, "Killed by the Indians." Happy Phineas Arms, at the age of seventeen to exchange in a moment the tedium of the ...
— Baddeck and That Sort of Thing • Charles Dudley Warner |
