Hat had been visible enough in all our lives for a few months past.
This,
however, to my conception, takes nothing from the tragedy. For, has
not the
world come to an awfully sophisticated
pass, when, after a certain degree of acquaintance with it, we cannot
even put ourselves to death in whole-hearted
simplicity? Slowly, slowly, with many a dreary pause,--resting the
bier
often on some rock or balancing it across a mossy log, to take fresh
hold,--we bore our burden onward
through the moonlight, and at last laid Zenobia on
the floor of the old farmhouse. By and by came three or four withered
women and stood whispering around the corpse, peering at it through
their spectacles, holding up their skinny hands, shaking their
night-capped
heads, and taking counsel of one another's experience what was to be
done. With those tire-women we left Zenobia. XXVIII. BLITHEDALE
PASTURE Blithedale, thus far in its progress, had never found the
necessity of a burial-ground. There was some consultation among us in
what spot Zenobia might most fitly be laid.
It was my own wish that she should sleep at the base of Eliot's
pulpit, and that on the rugged front of the rock the name by which
we familiarly knew her, Zenobia,--and not another word,
should be deeply cut, and left for the moss
and lichens to fill up at their long leisure. But Hollingsworth (to
whose ideas on this point great deference was due) made it
his request that her grave might be
dug on the gently sloping hill
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