The slender curve of
the new moon was also visible brightening amidst the fading brightness of
the sunny part of the sky. There are marble-quarries in and near
Pittsfield, which accounts for the fact that there are none but marble
gravestones in the burial-grounds; some of the monuments well carved; but
the marble does not withstand the wear and tear of time and weather so
well as the imported marble, and the sculpture soon loses its sharp
outline. The door of one tomb, a wooden door, opening in the side of a
green mound, surmounted by a marble obelisk, having been shaken from its
hinges by the late explosion of the powder-house, and incompletely
repaired, I peeped in at the crevices, and saw the coffins. It was the
tomb of Rev. Thomas Allen, first minister of Pittsfield, deceased in
1810. It contained three coffins, all with white mould on their tops:
one, a small child's, rested upon another, and the other was on the
opposite side of the tomb, and the lid was considerably displaced; but,
the tomb being dark, I could see neither corpse nor skeleton.
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