Most of the men were dressed in
their ordinary clothes, and one or two were in shirt-sleeves. The coffin
was placed in the midst of us, covered with a velvet pall. A bepaid
clergyman prayed (the audience remaining seated, while he stood up at the
head of the coffin), read a passage of Scripture and commented upon it.
While he read and prayed and expounded there was a heavy thunder-storm
rumbling among the surrounding hills, and the lightning flashed fiercely
through the gloomy room; and the preacher alluded to GOD's voice of
thunder.
It is the custom in this part of the country--and perhaps extensively in
the interior of New England--to bury the dead first in a charnel-house,
or common tomb, where they remain till decay has so far progressed as to
secure them from the resurrectionists. They are then reburied, with
certain ceremonies, in their own peculiar graves.
O. E. S------, a widower of forty or upwards, with a son of twelve and a
pair of infant twins. He is a sharp, shrewd Yankee, with a Yankee's
license of honesty. He drinks sometimes more than enough, and is guilty
of peccadilloes with the fair sex; yet speaks most affectionately
of his wife, and is a fond and careful father.
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