Tales of a Time And Place
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MADRILENE; OR, THE FESTIVAL OF THE DEAD. OTHING was silent about the old cemetery but the dead themselves? nothing respectable; all the noises and confusions that had harassed them in life were here to harrow the atmosphere above their rest in death ; all the mould and ugliness of an undergrowth population, which their living feet had avoided, lay thick and fetid all round about the walls ramparted with tombs that enclosed them now. The city had grown densely around the cemetery, but the houses had backed up or sidled up, as it were, not caring to face their grim neighbor. Those which by necessity did face it had the aspect of houses accustomed to look at worse things in life than death?houses that had not enjoyed the sad privilege of falling from a higher estate or disappointing .hopeful prospects, but wh
...ich had been preordained from the beginning to degradation and ostracism. A broad space had been left in front by the city ancestors for some beautiful boulevard or funeral parade-ground, but it had become an unsightly waste, a " common" for street children, a lounging-place for social refuse, a medium for back-door convivialities and intrigues, a dumping-ground for unmagazinable traffic, and the lower end of it the landing-wharf for a schooner fleet, which discharged daily cargoes of lumber, brick, and charcoal onto the frazzled grass, and daily crews of negroes, " dagos," and roughs into the ill-favored coffee-houses at the corners. Up in the air the thin fine spars of the vessels could be seen coming in from the distance along the invisible canal, gliding into and out of occul- tation, past trees and houses and open garden spots, and past the cemetery. And sometimes they seemed sailing or being cordelled straight through the cemetery; and then, by a fancy, ...
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