Of Course There Is Society In New York Where
The Vulgar Influence Of Money Is Omnipotent, And Extravagant Display Is
Fashionable; It Is Of The Best That I Have Been Speaking.
CHAPTER XVII.
The cemetery - Its beauties - The "Potter's Field" - The graves of children -
Monumental eccentricities - Arrival of emigrants - Their reception - Poor
dwellings - The dangerous class - The elections - The riots - Characteristics
of the streets - Journey to Boston - The sights of Boston - Longfellow -
Cambridge university.
It may seem a sudden transition from society to a cemetery, and yet it is
not an unnatural one, for many of the citizens of New York carry their
magnificence as far as possible to the grave with them, and pile their
wealth above their heads in superb mausoleums or costly statues. The Père
la Chaise of the city is the Greenwood Cemetery, near Brooklyn on Long
Island. I saw it on the finest and coldest of November days, when a
piercing east wind was denuding the trees of their last scarlet honours.
After encountering more than the usual crush in Broadway, for we were
rather more than an hour in driving three miles in a stage, we crossed the
Brooklyn Ferry in one of those palace ferry-boats, where the spacious
rooms for passengers are heated by steam-pipes, and the charge is only one
cent, or a fraction less than a halfpenny. It was a beautiful day; there
was not a cloud upon the sky; the waves of the Sound and of the North
River were crisped and foam-tipped, and dashed noisily upon the white
pebbly beach. Brooklyn, Jersey, and Hoboken rose from the water, with
their green fields and avenues of villas; white, smokeless steamers were
passing and repassing; large anchored ships tossed upon the waves; and New
York, that compound of trees, buildings, masts, and spires, rose in the
rear, without so much as a single cloud of smoke hovering over it.
A railway runs from Brooklyn to the cemetery, with the cars drawn by
horses, and the dead of New York are conveniently carried to this last
resting-place. The entrance is handsome, and the numerous walls and
carriage-drives are laid with fine gravel, and beautifully swept. We drove
to see the most interesting objects, and the coachman seemed to take a
peculiar pride in pointing them out. This noble burying-ground has some
prettily diversified hill and dale scenery, and is six miles round. The
timber is very fine, and throughout art has only been required as an
assistance to nature. To this cemetery most of the dead of New York are
carried, and after "life's fitful fever," in its most exaggerated form,
sleep in appropriate silence. Already several thousand dead have been
placed here in places of sepulture varying in appearance from the most
splendid and ornate to the simplest and most obscure. There are family
mausoleums, gloomy and sepulchral looking, in the Grecian style; family
burying-grounds neatly enclosed by iron or bronze railings, where white
marble crosses mark the graves; there are tombs with epitaphs, and tombs
with statues; there are simple cenotaphs and monumental slabs, and
nameless graves marked by numbers only.
One very remarkable feature of this cemetery is the "Potter's Field," a
plot containing several acres of ground, where strangers are buried. This
is already occupied to a great extent. The graves are placed in rows close
together, with numbers on a small iron plate to denote each. Here the
shipwrecked, the pestilence-stricken, the penniless, and friendless are
buried; and though such a spot cannot fail to provoke sad musings, the
people of New York do not suffer any appearances of neglect to accumulate
round the last resting-place of those who died unfriended and alone.
Another feature, not to be met with in England, strikes the stranger at
first with ludicrous images, though in reality it has more of the
pathetic. In one part of this cemetery there are several hundred graves of
children, and these, with most others of children of the poorer class,
have toys in glass cases placed upon them. There are playthings of many
kinds, woolly dogs and lambs, and little wooden houses, toys which must be
associated in the parents' minds with those who made their homes glad, but
who have gone into the grave before them. One cannot but think of the
bright eyes dim, the merry laugh and infantine prattle silent, the little
hands, once so active in playful mischief, stiff and cold; all brought so
to mind by the sight of those toys. There is a fearful amount of mortality
among children at New York, and in several instances four or five buried
in one grave told with mournful suggestiveness of the silence and
desolation of once happy hearths.
There are a few very remarkable and somewhat fantastic monuments. There is
a beautiful one in white marble to the memory of a sea-captain's wife,
with an exact likeness of himself, in the attitude of taking an
observation, on the top. An inscription to himself is likewise upon it,
leaving only the date of his death to be added. It is said that, when this
poor man returns from a voyage, he spends one whole day in the tomb,
lamenting his bereavement.
There is a superb monument, erected by a fireman's company to the memory
of one of their brethren, who lost his life while nobly rescuing an infant
from a burning dwelling. His statue is on the top, with an infant in his
arms, and the implements of his profession lie below. But by far the most
extraordinary, and certainly one of the lions of New York, is to a young
lady who was killed in coming home from a ball. The carriage-horses ran
away, she jumped out, and was crushed under the wheels. She stands under a
marble canopy supported by angels, and is represented in her ball-dress,
with a mantle thrown over it. This monument has numerous pillars and
representations of celestial beings, and is said to have cost about
6000l. Several of the marble mausoleums cost from 4000l. to 5000l.
Yet all the powerful, the wealthy, and the poor have descended to the dust
from whence they sprung; and here, as everywhere else, nothing can
disguise the fact that man, the feeble sport of passion and infirmity, can
only claim for his inheritance at last the gloom of a silent grave, where
he must sleep with the dust of his fathers.
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