On the other side of
the road spread the famous apple orchard, over twenty acres, the trees
planted by hands long mouldering in the grave (my uncle Jesse's,) but
quite many of them evidently capable of throwing out their annual
blossoms and fruit yet.
I now write these lines seated on an old grave (doubtless of a
century since at least) on the burial hill of the Whitmans of many
generations. Fifty or more graves are quite plainly traceable, and
as many more decay'd out of all form--depress'd mounds, crumbled and
broken stones, cover'd with moss--the gray and sterile hill, the
clumps of chestnuts outside, the silence, just varied by the soughing
wind. There is always the deepest eloquence of sermon or poem in any
of these ancient graveyards of which Long Island has so many; so what
must this one have been to me? My whole family history, with its
succession of links, from the first settlement down to date, told
here--three centuries concentrate on this sterile acre.
The next day, July 30, I devoted to the maternal locality, and if
possible was still more penetrated and impress'd. I write this
paragraph on the burial hul of the Van Velsors, near Cold Spring,
the most significant depository of the dead that could be imagin'd,
without the slightest help from art, but far ahead of it, soil
sterile, a mostly bare plateau-flat of half an acre, the top of a
hill, brush and well grown trees and dense woods bordering all around,
very primi-tive, secluded, no visitors, no road (you cannot drive
here, you have to bring the dead on foot, and follow on foot.
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