Page:Aunt Phillis's Cabin.djvu/241

 had been several funerals that day. A woman stood at the door of the house, at the entrance of the cemetery, with a baby in her arms; and another child of two years old was playing around a large bier, that had been left there until it should be wanted again.

Mrs. Weston met with an acquaintance, soon after they entered the ground, and they stopped to converse, while Mr. Weston and the younger ladies walked on. Near a large vault they stopped a moment, surprised to see two or three little boys playing at marbles. They were ruddy, healthy-looking boys, marking out places in the gravel path for the game; shooting, laughing, and winning, and so much occupied that if death himself had come along on his pale horse, they would have asked him to wait a while till they could let him pass, if indeed they had seen him at all. Mr. Weston tried to address them several times, but they could not attend to him until the game was completed, when one of them sprang upon the vault and began to count over his marbles, and the others sat down on a low monument to rest.

"Boys," said Mr. Weston, "I am very sorry to see you playing marbles in a burial-ground. Don't you see all these graves around you?"

"We don't go on the dead people," said an honest-faced little fellow. "You see the grass is wet there; we play here in the walk, where its nice and dry."

"But you ought to play outside," said Mr. Weston. "This is too sacred a place to be made the scene of your amusements."

"We don't hurt any body," said the largest boy. "When people are dead they don't hear nothin; where's the harm?"

"Well," said Mr. Weston, "there's one thing certain, none of you have any friends buried here. If you had, you would not treat them so unkindly."

"My mother is buried over yonder," said the boy on the