Page:The Granite Monthly Volume 5.djvu/38

 26 THE GRANITE MONTHLY.

the effects of his wounds, October 6th, at the age of thirty-three. He was buried at Williamsburg the next day, amid all the honors that could be shown on the occasion.

Before he became Sullivan's confidential clerk, Scammel had been a school- master and a surveyor. He was born in Milford, Massachusetts, and graduated at Harvard in 1769. In 1770, he was a member of the Old Colony Club, the first society in New England to commemorate publicly the landing of the Pilgrim Fathers. In August, 1772, he was in government employment on board the armed sloop " Lord Chatham, " bound for Boston with dispatches and plans for the Lords of the Treasury. The next winter he taught school at Berwick, when he became acquainted with the Sullivans. The esteem in which he was held by his brother officers is amply illustrated by the fact that when Lafayette was on his last visit to this country, at a large gathering of Revolu- tionary veterans, the noble marquis proposed as a toast, " To the memory of Yorktown Scammel," which was vociferously drank.

Not far from the mansion is the family cemetery of the Sullivans. It is a dreamy, deserted old place, enclosed by a stone wall and shadowed by rows of apple trees. The sun was setting as we strayed into the enclosure. There are about a dozen graves therein, each marked by a cheap, oblong marble tomb- stone. Most of them show signs of dilapidation and age. We stand before one of the plain marble slabs that, though moss grown and defaced by time, still preserves its inscription intact. We read ;

SACRED

TO THE MEMORY OF

MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN SULLIVAN,

WHO WAS BORN

FEBRUARY 17th, 1 74O,

AND DIED JANUARY 23rd, 1795.

Underneath rests all that remains of the great lawyer, the brave soldier of our war for independence, the worthy chief magistrate of New Hampshire. On the foot stone is simply engraved the initials of his name, J. S. His wife Lydia lies buried beside him. She died in 1820, at the age of eighty-two.

At a little distance sleep the elder John Sullivan and Margery his wife. The dates upon their tomb-stones, show that they both died at a good old age, after outliving their most illustrious son. The old man died in 1796, at the remarkable age of one hundred and four years. His wife died at the age of eighty-five, in i8ot. They were buried first at Berwick, but were removed to Durham a short time before my visit. The soil was very sandy in which they had been buried, and their bones were said to have been nearly entire. We presume that, as a rule, the less the remains are enclosed and the quicker the enclosing wood decays, the longer the bones are preserved. Even at this dis- tant date, uncoffined Indian remains are sometimes disinterred in this State.

The sun has gone, and as the twilight deepens, the full, silver faced moon rises above the picturesquely wooded hills, and the stars come out. We will not hasten. The air is full of mystic softness. The silvery light of the moon falls in wierd like shadows upon the clustering grave stones, bathes the old mansion in a sea of radiance, and flashes with the gleam of diamonds upon the river ripples of the classic bivalve. We stand wrapped in thoughts. The gay, the beautiful, the proud had trod the soil where I stood. Vice regal cor- teges have swept from yonder door. Those whom the world delighted to honor have abode under that roof. The ambitious have here dreamed dreams. The lover had breathed words of undying devotion, and all had been fulfilled. But what mattered it ? All is past and forgotten. " Sic tran- sit gloria mundi! " My cigar is ashes. Good night ! good night !

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