Over the Border: Acadia, the Home of "Evangeline"Chase, Eliza B. (Eliza Brown)
History
Over the Border: Acadia, the Home of "Evangeline"
Chase, Eliza B. (Eliza Brown)
Nova Scotia -- Description and travel
In our antiquarian researches we are naturally drawn to the old
cemetery, adjoining the fort grounds; but learn that the oldest graves
were marked by oaken slabs, which have all disappeared, as have also
many odd stone ones. But among those still standing one records that
some one "dyed 1729"; another states that the body below "is deposited
here until the last trump"; and one, which must be the veritable
original of the "affliction sore" rhyme, ends: "till death did seize
and God did please to ease me of my pain." Still another bears this
epitaph, _verbatim et literatim_--
"Stay friend stay nor let thy hart prophane
The humble Stone that tells you life is vain.
Here lyes a youth in moulding ruin lost
A blossom nipt by death's untimely frost
O then prepare to meet with him above
In realms of everlasting love."
The stone-cutter's hand must have been as weary when he blundered over
the word humble as the poet's brain evidently was when he reached the
line which limps so lamely to the conclusion. Near this recently stood
a stone,
"With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked,"
on which the representation of Father Time was carved in such peculiar
manner that from pose and expression the figure might have passed for a
lively youth rather than the dread reaper, and was irreverently known
to the village youths as "Sarah's young man", a title suggested by a
popular song of the day.
In a remote corner we find the tomb of "Gregoria Remonia Antonia", "a
native of Spain"; and afterwards learn her story,--an episode in the
life of the Iron Duke which does not do him honor. Did _la grande dame_,
the Duchess, ever know of the fair foreigner who supplanted her, the
dame o' high degree, in her husband's affection? Did the beautiful
Spanish maiden dream, when the brilliant English General wooed her,
that he was doing her and another woman the greatest wrong? Little did
the fascinating Spaniard think that the so-called "nobleman" would
compel her to marry another; and that other a rough, illiterate man, who
would bring her to this wild, strange, far-away country, and that here
she should be laid to rest "after life's fitful fever." Is it to be
wondered at that her fiery Southern spirit rebelled, that her wrongs
embittered her, and that her life here was unhappy?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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