Chippings with a Chisel

Chippings with a Chisel Nathaniel HawthorneIn my walks through the burial-ground of Edgartown - where the dead have lain so long that the soil, once enriched by their decay, has returned to its original barrenness - in that ancient burial-ground I noticed much variety of monumental sculpture. The elder stones, dated a century back or more, have borders elaborately carved with flowers and are adorned with a multiplicity of death's- heads, crossbones, scythes, hour-glasses, and other lugubrious emblems of mortality, with here and there a winged cherub to direct the mourner's spirit upward.


Genre: Literary Fiction