Intent on his purpose, he immediately purchased a carriage and proceeded on for Philadelphia. As he approached Charleston, his bosom swelled with mournful recollections. He arrived in that city in the afternoon, and at evening he walked out, and entered a little ale house, which stood near the large burial ground. An elderly woman and two small children were the only persons in the house, except himself. After calling for a pint of ale, he enquired of the old lady, if Col. D----, (Melissa's uncle) did not live near the city. She informed him that he resided about a mile from the town, where he had an elegant seat, and that he was very rich. "Was there not a young lady, asked Alonzo, who died there about eighteen months ago?" "La me! said she, did you know her? Yes: and a sweeter or more handsome lady the sun never shined on. And then she was so good, so patient in her sickness.--Poor, dear distressed girl, she pined away to skin and bones before she died. She was not Col. D----'s daughter, only somehow related: she came here in hopes that a change of air might do her good. She came from--la me! I cannot think of the name of the place;--it is a crabbed name though." "Connecticut, was it not?" said Alonzo. "O yes, that was it, replied she. Dear me! then you knew her, did you, sir?--Well, we have not her like left in Charleston; that we han't;--and then there was such ado at her funeral; five hundred people, I dare say, with eight young ladies for pall-bearers, all dressed in white, with black ribbons, and all the bells tolling." "Where was she buried?" enquired Alonzo. "In the church-yard right before our door, she answered. My husband is the sexton; he put up her large white marble tomb-stones;----they are the largest and whitest in the whole burying-ground; and so, indeed, they ought to be, for never was there a person who deserved them more." Tired with the old woman's garrulity, and with a bosom bursting with anguish, Alonzo paid for his ale without drinking it, bade her good night, and slowly proceeded to the church-yard. The moon, in full lustre, shone with solemn, silvery ray, on the sacred piles, and funeral monuments of the sacred dead; the wind murmured mournfully among the weeping willows; a solitary nightingale[A] sang plaintively in the distant forest; and a whippoorwill, Melissa's favourite bird, whistled near the portico of the church. The large white tomb-stones soon caught the eye of Alonzo. He approached them with tremulous step, and with feelings too agitated for description. On the head-stone he read as follows: SACRED To the Memory of inestimable departed WORTH; To unrivalled Excellence and Virtue. Miss MELISSA D----, Whose remains are deposited here, and whose ethereal part became a seraph, October 26, 1776, In the 18th year of her age.