On the ninth of June my son and I, and a few of Thomas Paine's friends, set off with the corpse to New Rochelle, a place 22 miles from New York. It was my intention to have him buried in the Orchard of his own farm; but the farmer who lived there at that time said, that Thomas Paine, walking with him one day, said, pointing to another part of the land, he was desirous of being buried there. "Then," said I, "that shall be the place of his burial." And, my instructions were accordingly put in execution. The head-stone was put up about a week afterwards with the following inscription: "Thomas Paine, Author of "Common Sense," died the eighth of June, 1809, aged 72 years." According to his will, a wall twelve feet square was erected round his tomb. Four trees have been planted outside the wall, two weeping willows and two cypresses. Many persons have taken away pieces of the tombstone and of the trees, in memory of the deceased; foreigners especially have been eager to obtain these memorials, some of which have been sent to England.* They have been put in frames and preserved. Verses in honor of Paine have been written on the head stone. The grave is situated at the angle of the farm, by the entrance to it. This interment was a scene to affect and to wound any sensible heart. Contemplating who it was, what man it was, that we were committing to an obscure grave on an open and disregarded bit of land, I could not help feeling most acutely. Before the earth was thrown down upon the coffin, I, placing myself at the east end of the grave, said to my son Benjamin, "stand you there, at the other end, as a witness for grateful America." Looking round me, and beholding the small group of spectators, I exclaimed, as the earth was tumbled into the grave, "Oh! Mr. Paine! My son stands here as testimony of the gratitude of America, and I, for France!" This was the funeral ceremony of this great politician and philosopher!** * The breaking of the original gravestone has been traditionally ascribed to pious hatred. A fragment of it, now in New York, is sometimes shown at celebrations of Paine's birthday as a witness of the ferocity vented on Paine's grave. It is satisfactory to find another interpretation. ** Paine's friends, as we have said, were too poor to leave their work in the city, which had refused Paine a grave. The Rev. Robert Bolton, in his History of Westchester County, introduces Cheetham's slanders of Paine with the words: "as his own biographer remarks." His own! But even Cheetham does not lie enough for Bolton, who says: "His [Paine's] body was brought up from New York in a hearse used for carrying the dead, to Potter's Field; a white man drove the vehicle, accompanied by a negro to dig the grave." The whole Judas legend is in that allusion to Potter's Field. Such is history, where Paine is concerned!