The church of white clap-boards which these villagers used for praise and prayer--not a small temple--still abides. Many of the snowy houses of old New England worship pierce their luminous ether with graceful spires. But this meeting-house lifts a square, central bell-tower which now leans on one side as if weary with long standing. The old bell which summoned its people to their pews still hangs behind green blinds--a not unmusical town-crier. But use, life, good works have departed with those whom it exhorted to church duty, and in sympathy with all the human endeavor it once knew, but now fordone, in these days it never rings blithely, it can only be made to toll. Possibly it can only be made to toll because of the settling of its supporting tower. But the fact remains; and who knows if some wounded spirit may not be dwelling within its brazen curves, sick at heart with its passing and ineffective years? Not far from the church, up a swell of the land, lies the burying-ground--a sunny spot. Pines here and there, also hemlocks and trees which stand bare after the fall of leaves. But all is bright and open, not a hideous stone-quarry such as in our day vanity or untaught taste makes of resting-places of our dead. Gay-colored mushrooms waste their luxurious gaudiness between the trees, and steadfast myrtle, with an added depth to its green from the air’s clarity, binds the narrow mounds with ever-lengthening cords. But whether they are purple with the violets of May or with Michaelmas daisies, there is rest over all these mounds--“über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh’.” Daily gossip and sympathy these neighbors had. The man of this grave was he who passed many times a day up and down the path by the gooseberry-bushes and bore the foaming milk. He is as voiceless now as the flies that buzzed about his shining pail. And the widow who dwelt across the road--she of the sad eyes who sat always at her loom, for her youthful husband was of those who never came back from the massacre of Fort William Henry--she to whom this man hauled a sled of wood for every two he brought to his own door, to whom his family carried elderberry wine, cider, and home mince-meat on Thanksgiving--she, too, is voiceless even of thanks, her body lying over yonder, now in complete rest--no loom, no treadle, no thumping, no whirring of spinning-wheel, no narrow pinching and poverty, her soul of heroic endurance joined with her long separate soldier soul of action. The pathos of their lives and the warmth of their humanity!--however coated with New England austerity. Many touching stories these little headstones tell--as this: “To the memory of Mrs. Abigail, Consort of Mr. Joseph Merrill, who died May 3rd, 1767, in the 52 year of her age.”