"Headstone" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... make out all the story, though it was not difficult to define its essential tragedy, and later on a gossip in the neighborhood and a headstone in the churchyard told me the rest. The unquiet young soul that had sung so wistfully to and fro the orchard was my landlord's daughter. She was the only child of her parents, a beautiful, willful girl, exotically ...
— Famous Modern Ghost Stories • Various
... him. Mark walked round the stone walls that held up the little churchyard and, entering by a gate on the farther side, he looked at the headstones and admired the feathery tamarisks that waved over the tombs. He was reading an inscription more legible than most on a headstone of highly polished granite, when he heard a voice ...
— The Altar Steps • Compton MacKenzie
... was not more than thirty paces across. At one side was a little knoll—a natural hillock, bare of shrubbery but covered with wild grass, and on this, standing out of the grass, the headstone of ...
— Can Such Things Be? • Ambrose Bierce
... the gold of self-denial, the silver of white purity, the precious stones of variously-coloured and Christlike virtues? Then your work will indeed be incomplete, but its very incompleteness will be a prophecy of the time when 'the headstone shall be brought forth with shoutings'; and you may humbly trust that the day which 'declares every man's work of what sort it is' will not destroy yours, but that it will gleam and flash in the light of the revealing and reflecting ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... itself openly and unblushingly on the principle of property in man. It has been blasphemously announced that this is the stone which the builders of our government refused, and that it is now become the headstone of the corner of a divinely instituted nation. The blasphemy that hesitated not to declare John Brown equal with Jesus Christ, is hardly worse than this; for John Brown was, at least, an honest fanatic. The traitorous chiefs ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 5, No. 5, May, 1864 - Devoted To Literature And National Policy • Various
... English literature. It is not a monument fit for a poet. There is nothing airy or graceful about it,—and, indeed, there cannot he many men so solid and matter-of-fact as to deserve a tomb like that. Wordsworth's grave is much better, with only a simple headstone, and the grass growing over his mortality, which, for a thousand years, at least, it never can over Southey's. Most of the monuments are of this same black slate, and some erect headstones are curiously sculptured, and seem ...
— Passages From the English Notebooks, Complete • Nathaniel Hawthorne
... block stood now as marker for Patrick Casey's resting-place, carved with the words that Mormon had chalked on the wooden headstone. A railing outlined the grave, and the turf within it was kept short and green. Sandy squatted down and rolled a cigarette, smoking it as he sat cross-legged. Grit, as was his custom, leaped the railing lightly and lay down above the dust of his dead master, head couched on paws, turned a little ...
— Rimrock Trail • J. Allan Dunn
... girl to her lover, "Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide In me alone, she vowed. 'Twas to cover The cost of her headstone when she died. And that was a year ago last June; I've not yet fixed it. But I ...
— Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with - Miscellaneous Pieces • Thomas Hardy
... the Kaskaskia river, where the affidavits alleged the boy was buried in 1836. The river was a muddy little brook. No grave was to be found, but some little distance away was a burying ground. I went there searching for the grave. I found it not, but lying up against a fence was a headstone having the boy's name on it, and the date ...
— Between the Lines - Secret Service Stories Told Fifty Years After • Henry Bascom Smith
... stated Mr. Queed. "I was there just ahead of you. I was struck with that motto or text on the headstone, and shall look it up when I get home. I have been making a more careful study of your Bible this autumn and have found it exceptionally interesting. You, I suppose, subscribe to all the ...
— Queed • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... say she mourned him duly, and set a proper headstone at his grave. But, for my own part, I have no faith in that affection which will splinter a loving heart every day of its life, and yet, when it has ceased to beat, will make atonement with an ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 83, September, 1864 • Various
... the dew was on the grass, he made his way into the churchyard, and sought about for Geoffry's grave. He discovered it in a corner, marked by a plain headstone and shaded by an elder bush. It was the stone Geoffry had raised in memory of his Elizabeth, and below her name his was inscribed, with the date of his death. The churchyard was all neatly kept—this grave not more neatly than the others. Mrs. Carnegie's affections ...
— The Vicissitudes of Bessie Fairfax • Harriet Parr
... chosen for her chief; they jeered at his large hands, and long feet, and ungainly stature; and the British secretary of state for foreign affairs made haste to send word through the places of Europe that the great republic was in its agony; that the republic was no more; that a headstone was all that remained due by the law of nations to "the late Union." But it is written, "Let the dead bury their dead"; they may not bury the living. Let the dead bury their dead; let a bill of reform remove the worn-out government of a class, and infuse ...
— Our American Holidays: Lincoln's Birthday • Various
... see that rudely-shaped, dark blue stone, about 2 feet in width, the same in height, and 8 inches thick? Do you see the inscription upon it—E W in coarsely-carved letters, and the figures 1658 over them? That is, doubtless, the headstone of Whalley's grave. The footstone is similar, having the same letters; but above them you see figures that may be read either sixteen hundred and fifty-eight, or sixteen hundred and seventy-eight—16578. The latter was the date of the General's death; and ...
— American Scenes, and Christian Slavery - A Recent Tour of Four Thousand Miles in the United States • Ebenezer Davies
... Louie happens to have brains. That's the shortest way to account for her refusal of my very valuable devotions. But I'll tell you all about it, and, after that, we'll decide about the headstone. ...
— The Lady of the Ice - A Novel • James De Mille
... on a Tuesday morning; nevertheless, the church-bell was going, and the door was open as if for prayer. I was a little surprised at this, but having visited the grave where my father and mother lay, and then passed on to the simple headstone which marked the resting place of John Thornton and his wife, I brushed through the docks and nettles, towards the lychgate, in the shadow of which stood the clergyman, a gentlemanly looking young man, talking to a very aged ...
— The Recollections of Geoffrey Hamlyn • Henry Kingsley
... the town that a body had been washed ashore at Grave Point—the place where we bathed. We bathed there no more! How well I remember the funeral, and what a piteous sight it was afterwards to see his familiar name on a small headstone in the ...
— The Story of a Bad Boy • Thomas Bailey Aldrich
... Robin was violent, And she was crafty—a sweet violence, And a sweet craft. I would I were a milkmaid, To sing, love, marry, churn, brew, bake, and die, Then have my simple headstone by the church, And all things lived and ended honestly. I could not if I would. I am Harry's daughter: Gardiner would have my head. They are not sweet, The violence and the craft that do divide The world of nature; what is weak must lie; The lion needs ...
— Queen Mary and Harold • Alfred Lord Tennyson
... to himself and half to his old wife watching him from the other side of the hearthstone. "I spend a good quarter of my time in the churchyard; but when I saw those six little mounds, and read the inscriptions over them, I couldn't help feeling queer. Think of this! On the first tiny headstone I read ...
— Agatha Webb • Anna Katharine Green
... died in his throat, and he froze to a statue of fear. Beyond the headstone of Jonas Whipple, and toward the centre of the plot, a clump of syringa was plainly observed to sway with the movements of a ...
— The Wrong Twin • Harry Leon Wilson
... followed he seldom thought of Helena. He buried his wife in the village church-yard, and the wondering villagers might presently read on the headstone he placed over her grave, the short inscription—"Anna Buntingford, wife of Philip, Lord Buntingford," with the dates of her birth and death. The Alcotts, authorized by Philip, made public as much of the story as was necessary, and the ...
— Helena • Mrs. Humphry Ward
... not settled yet, Mr Headstone. I'd rather you didn't see her till she is settled, if it was ...
— Our Mutual Friend • Charles Dickens
... sloping hillside, and beneath the shade of a beautiful magnolia, they found what they sought: a grave, with a headstone on ...
— Elsie's Womanhood • Martha Finley
... from north-west to south-east; and at the latter point there is a large upright headstone, averaging from ten to fifteen feet high, varying in its form, from the square, elliptical, and conical, to that of three-fourths of an egg; and having in many instances an aperture about eighteen inches square at ...
— Rambles in the Islands of Corsica and Sardinia - with Notices of their History, Antiquities, and Present Condition. • Thomas Forester
... adjoining. No one in the district knew who the stranger was, but as sufficient money had been found on him to pay the cost of the burial, his corpse was placed in Mancetter Churchyard, and as his name was unknown, some mysterious initials, of which no one now living knew the meaning, appeared on the headstone. ...
— From John O'Groats to Land's End • Robert Naylor and John Naylor
... keep Uncle Hezekiah's headstone. In the end we made an inside walk of the collection, for the old cellar had a dirt floor and was not always dry, but we laid them face down. When we had raked and swept, and brushed and put back the articles accepted by the board, and all was ...
— Dwellers in Arcady - The Story of an Abandoned Farm • Albert Bigelow Paine
... too," he laughed. "Ye see, I love you so and try ter make ye happy, an' ef there wuz ter come er time that there wuz plenty o' work an' real money in it, I'd stick to it jist ter please you, an' be a lost an' ruined soul! Yessir, they'd carve on my headstone jest one line: ...
— The Southerner - A Romance of the Real Lincoln • Thomas Dixon
... out and went up of course on foot, and stood a long while and ponder'd. They lie close together in a pleasant wooded spot well up the cemetery hill, "Sleepy Hollow." The flat surface of the first was densely cover'd by myrtle, with a border of arbor-vitae, and the other had a brown headstone, moderately elaborate, with inscriptions. By Henry's side lies his brother John, of whom much was expected, but he died young. Then to Walden pond, that beautiful embower'd sheet of water, and spent over an hour there. On the spot in the woods where Thoreau had his solitary house is now ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman
... some few faculties and energy, moved on beyond the church, till he came to the white coral headstone, where he ...
— Captain Brand of the "Centipede" • H. A. (Henry Augustus) Wise
... As they are unto us matter of great praise and hearty thanksgiving unto GOD, so also an evidence of the stedfastness of many in England, and a token for good, and a wide door of hope that the Lord will perfect his Work and bring forth the headstone of his House in that Land. It shall be the wisdom of each Nation to keep the golden path of truth and righteousnesse betwixt the crooked wayes of Malignants upon the one hand and Secteries upon the other, and for each of the Nations ...
— The Acts Of The General Assemblies of the Church of Scotland
... of sandstone bearing unintelligible marks, possibly intended for a man and a beast. We called it "St. George and the Dragon," but the former is afoot—possibly the Bedawin stole his steed. There was a frustum or column-drum of fine white marble, hollowed to act as a mortar; like the Moslem headstone of the same material, it is attributed to the Jebel el-Lauz, where ancient quarries are talked of. There were also Makrkah ("rub-stones") of close-grained red syenite, and fragments of the basalt handmills used for quartz-grinding. Part ...
— The Land of Midian, Vol. 1 • Richard Burton
... recognize the nature of these trees, this foliage—the cypress, the willow, the yew. Stone crosses like these are not unfamiliar to you, nor are these dim garlands of everlasting flowers. Here is the place—green sod and a gray marble headstone. Jessy sleeps below. She lived through an April day; much loved was she, much loving. She often, in her brief life, shed tears, she had frequent sorrows; she smiled between, gladdening whatever saw her. Her death was tranquil and happy in Rose's guardian ...
— Shirley • Charlotte Bronte
... reaction he passed to a higher field of romance. He would die for George and then she would bring the little boy she had named William to the lonely headstone—Suddenly William saw himself in his true and fitting character—Sydney Carton! He had lately read A Tale of Two Cities, immediately re-reading until, as he would have said, he "knew it by heart"; and even at the time he had seen resemblances between himself and ...
— Seventeen - A Tale Of Youth And Summer Time And The Baxter Family Especially William • Booth Tarkington
... their being shut up here, Andrew Black stood one afternoon leaning against the headstone of a grave on which Quentin Dick and Will Wallace were seated. It had been raining, and the grass and their garments were very wet. A leaden sky overhead seemed to have deepened their despair, for they remained silent for ...
— Hunted and Harried • R.M. Ballantyne
... little set of tables and weights and measures, and a little woman all in one. She could write a little essay on any subject exactly a slate long, and strictly according to rule. If Mr. Bradley Headstone had proposed marriage to her, she would certainly have replied 'yes,' for she loved him;" but Mr. Headstone did not love Miss Peecher—he loved Lizzie Hexam, and had no love to spare for any other woman.—C. Dickens, Our Mutual Friend, ...
— Character Sketches of Romance, Fiction and the Drama - A Revised American Edition of the Reader's Handbook, Vol. 3 • E. Cobham Brewer
... guide, pointing to a very small exhibit in his peculiar collection. I laid the flowers on it and glanced at the headstone. The simple inscription read: ...
— Cupid's Middleman • Edward B. Lent
... juts out into the ocean and the great waves that continually lash against it make it perhaps the most dreaded spot by sailors in all the trade routes of the world. On all sides are wrecked vessels and this rock has been named the Giant Headstone in ...
— Birdseye Views of Far Lands • James T. Nichols
... anything so clever as that might have been thought to have earned the right to headstone and epitaph in full. Yet his resting-place remains unmarked, and his name apparently dogged him to the end, ...
— 'Murphy' - A Message to Dog Lovers • Major Gambier-Parry
... the cottage at Westerkirk, and accompany the poor widow to the Sunday services at the parish kirk. As long as she lived, indeed, he never forgot her; and one of the first tasks he set himself when he was out of his indentures was to cut a neat headstone with a simple but beautiful inscription for the grave of that shepherd father whom he had practically never seen. At Langholm, an old maiden lady, Miss Pasley, interested herself kindly in Janet Telford's rising boy. She lent ...
— Biographies of Working Men • Grant Allen
... at his funeral, when the mayor and council, the volunteers and chief inhabitants of King William's Town (every window shuttered) followed him to the grave, where Archdeacon Kitton read the solemn service; and some months after, a marble headstone was placed over his remains. His two brothers have written some touching stanzas to his memory: but they ...
— My Life as an Author • Martin Farquhar Tupper
... Mary Hynes and who said of her "The sun and the moon never shone upon anything so handsome" that I first heard Raftery's song of praise of her, "The pearl that was at Ballylee," a song "that has gone around the world & as far as America." It was in a stonecutter's house where I went to have a headstone made for Raftery's grave that I found a manuscript book of his poems, written out in the clear beautiful Irish characters. It was to a working farmer's house I walked on many a moonlit evening with the manuscript that ...
— The Kiltartan Poetry Book • Lady Gregory
... other days, I doing all the talking, and he no less silent than usual there in his holy grave. We had never quarreled as man and wife, because he would not do his part of the contending. I untied my bonnet strings, took it off and laid it on the grass, sat down by his headstone and cried—not so much for him as for fear he would ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... very brief inscription on this modest headstone; but it was enough to tell me whose ashes lay buried under the ...
— Henry Dunbar - A Novel • M. E. Braddon
... Some one must have dropped it. She stood up and looked around, but there was no one in sight. On the other side of a holly bush, however, a number of just such roses lay on a grave. Rosalind walked over and stooped to read the name on the low headstone. "Robert Ellis Fair," she repeated half aloud as she laid her rose ...
— Mr. Pat's Little Girl - A Story of the Arden Foresters • Mary F. Leonard
... bookseller, Creech, the same floor had been trod by the feet of his great forerunner. He visited, too, the lowly grave of the unfortunate Robert Fergusson; and it must be recorded to the shame of the magistrates of Edinburgh, that they allowed him to erect a headstone to his memory, and to the scandal of Scotland, that in such a memorial he had not been anticipated. He seems not to have regarded the graves of scholars or philosophers; and he trod the pavements where the warlike princes and nobles ...
— The Complete Works of Robert Burns: Containing his Poems, Songs, and Correspondence. • Robert Burns and Allan Cunningham
... by Wordsworth's grave in the churchyard at Grasmere, and my companion wove a chaplet of flowers and placed it on the headstone. Afterwards we went into the old church and sat down in the poet's pew. "They are all dead and gone now," sighed the gray-headed sexton; "but I can remember when the seats used to be filled by the family from Rydal Mount. Now they are all ...
— Yesterdays with Authors • James T. Fields
... nameless terror. Her most peaceful moments were those in which she managed to convince herself that Evelina was dead. She thought of her then, mournfully but more calmly, as thrust away under the neglected mound of some unknown cemetery, where no headstone marked her name, no mourner with flowers for another grave paused in pity to lay a blossom on hers. But this vision did not often give Ann Eliza its negative relief; and always, beneath its hazy lines, lurked the dark ...
— Bunner Sisters • Edith Wharton
... before the grave of William Penn, marked by the plainest kind of a small headstone and identical with the few others beside it. We expressed wonder at this, but the lady with whom we had previously talked explained that it would be inharmonious with the Quaker idea to erect a splendid monument to any ...
— British Highways And Byways From A Motor Car - Being A Record Of A Five Thousand Mile Tour In England, - Wales And Scotland • Thomas D. Murphy
... emphatically, "and you mustn't say it. Always speak well of the dead." And, as they couldn't honestly do that, they obeyed him and left Mr. Jinks in his unhonoured grave, with a broken wheel-barrow for a headstone and a mass of wire-netting to make resurrection difficult. In order to get the disagreeable epitaph out of their minds Uncle Felix substituted a kinder and gentler one, and made them learn ...
— The Extra Day • Algernon Blackwood
... with the French nurse firmly established one thing in her mind. The man who was buried in the cemetery of Auteuil with the name of Lord Harry Norland on a headstone, the man who had lingered so long with pulmonary disease, was the man whose death she had witnessed. It was Oxbye the Dane. Of that there could be no doubt. Equally there was no doubt in her own mind that he had been poisoned by the doctor—by Mrs. Vimpany's husband—in the presence ...
— Blind Love • Wilkie Collins
... train wound away one night behind the church, and left her down among those red-cup mosses that opened in so few months again to cradle the sister who had loved her. Two words only, by mother's orders, marked the simple headstone,— ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 106, August, 1866 • Various
... Podger has a tomb in Kensal Green Cemetery, that is the pride of all that country-side; and my grandfather's vault at Bow is capable of accommodating eight visitors, while my great-aunt Susan has a brick grave in Finchley Churchyard, with a headstone with a coffee- pot sort of thing in bas-relief upon it, and a six-inch best white stone coping all the way round, that cost pounds. When I want graves, it is to those places that I go and revel. I do not want other folk's. When you yourself are buried, ...
— Three Men in a Boa • Jerome K. Jerome
... of diversion in my heavy sorrow, I got a well-shapen headstone made for her; but a headstone without a epitaph being no better than a body without the breath of life in't, I made a poesy for the monument, not in the Latin tongue, which Mrs. Balwhidder, worthy woman ...
— The World's Greatest Books, Vol IV. • Editors: Arthur Mee and J.A. Hammerton
... purpose no longer exists. Circumstances have completely altered my intentions. The finger of God is in it. He has not brought us together thus strangely, except to serve some purpose of His own. I think I see that purpose. 'The stone which the builders refused is become the headstone of the corner. This is the Lord's doing; it is marvelous in our eyes,'" he quoted unctiously. "I am convinced that it is a waste of good material to crush you; therefore I desire to effect a consolidation with you, buy all the other copper interests of any importance in the country, ...
— Ridgway of Montana - (Story of To-Day, in Which the Hero Is Also the Villain) • William MacLeod Raine
... we should look ahead, and see nothing before us but the grave—the end of all? [Draw the grave, the headstone, and the word, "Death," with ...
— Crayon and Character: Truth Made Clear Through Eye and Ear - Or, Ten-Minute Talks with Colored Chalks • B.J. Griswold
... priests. On the little slab that marked his resting-place no mention was made of the mighty work he had done for truth. There were fears that when the character of his book was known, the grave of Copernicus would not remain undisturbed, and so the inscription on the headstone was simply this: "I ask not the grace accorded to Paul; not that given to Peter; give me only the favor which Thou didst show to the thief on ...
— Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great - Volume 12 - Little Journeys to the Homes of Great Scientists • Elbert Hubbard
... children or grandchildren of Susan Meynell," he said; "I have found the registry of her interment in the churchyard of St. Giles's, Cripplegate. She is described in that registry by her maiden name, and there is a plain headstone in a corner of the ground, inscribed with the name of Susan Meynell, who died July 14th, 1835, much lamented; and then the text about 'the one sinner that repenteth,' and so on," said Mr. Sheldon, as if he did not care to dwell ...
— Birds of Prey • M. E. Braddon
... the fearsome discord?" he asked. "It makes me think of an epitaph I once saw carved on a pretentious headstone in a ...
— The Little Colonel: Maid of Honor • Annie Fellows Johnston
... Dolly talking softly together about "little Auntie Dot," then running off hand in hand to make the "captain's glave plitty," as Dolly expressed it. Erica, following them, glanced at the plain white headstone and read the name: "John Frewin, sometimes captain of ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall
... beneath the shadow of the soot-grimed church's soot-grimed porch—that is, if the sun happen, by rare chance, to be strong enough to cast any shadow at all in that region of grey light—a curiously high and narrow headstone that once was white and straight, not tottering and bent with age as it is now. There is upon this stone a carving in bas-relief, as you will see for yourself if you will make your way to it through the gateway on the opposite side of the square. It represents, so far as can be made out, for it ...
— John Ingerfield and Other Stories • Jerome K. Jerome
... Dick replied, with a new ring in his voice. "You're right. I've been ten sorts of a fool, but I know now what I'm going to do. Take your paper, old friend, and for my sake go out and clear Jud Clark. Put up a headstone to him, if you like, a good ...
— The Breaking Point • Mary Roberts Rinehart
... Mayhap the shining, but sure the woe! For in the sunlight the shadows grow Over the new name on the door, Over the face unseen before. Yet who shall number, by any art, The chasms that keep so wide apart The dancing step and the weary heart? Oh, who shall guess that the polished wall Is a headstone ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 2, Issue 11, September, 1858 • Various
... his shoulders. "You have reason," he remarked. "Why should you believe me? Come to Cruta, and you will see for yourself. You can see the headstone at the foot of the grave: 'Sacred to the memory of Marie, faithful servant of Irene of Cruta.' You can see the doctor who attended her and your wife at the same time! Better still, you can see your wife and your infant son! What do ...
— A Monk of Cruta • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... in the north part of the town—the first cemetery in the region—is a headstone marking the grave of a pious negro slave, on which is rudely chiselled ...
— The New England Magazine, Volume 1, No. 1, January 1886 - Bay State Monthly, Volume 4, No. 1, January, 1886 • Various
... oboli are tossed into his tomb to satisfy the surly boatman of the Styx. Lingeringly is the last look taken of the familiar countenance, as the procession passes slowly around the tomb; and the moaning is made,—a sound of groans going up to the seventh heavens,—and the earth is thrown in, and the headstone with epitaph placed duly to hallow the grave of the dead. Or if, according to the custom of his native land, the body of Euclid is committed to the funeral flames, the pyre, duly prepared with combustibles, is made the centre of the ring; a ponderous jar of turpentine or whiskey is the fragrant ...
— A Collection of College Words and Customs • Benjamin Homer Hall
... he counted off the four panels westward and knew that he was opposite the grave of the suicide. It must now be nearly midnight. He thought he heard sounds not far away, and there across the road he saw a whitish thing—the headstone. He was greatly agitated as he crawled quietly as possible toward it. Why quietly he did not know. He stumbled through the mud of the shallow ditch at each side, reached the white stone, and groped with clammy, cold hands over the surface ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton
... my heart and I. We sit beside the headstone thus, And wish that name were carved for us. The moss reprints more tenderly The hard types of the mason's knife, As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life With which we're tired, my heart ...
— The Poetical Works of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Volume IV • Elizabeth Barrett Browning
... marking the scene of some dark tragedy, which, in the superstitious haze thrown over it by time, assumes various and uncertain forms. At different times two strangers are introduced, who appear to have some obscure knowledge of, and connection with, the ghastly footstep; and, finally, a headstone is discovered in the neighboring cemetery, marking the spot where an old man had been buried many years since, and engraved with the likeness of a foot. The grave has been recently opened to admit a new occupant, and the children, ...
— A Study Of Hawthorne • George Parsons Lathrop
... grave except one. Freda came across it with a feeling of surprise. It was away down in the lower corner where there were no plots. It was shut off from the others by a growth of young poplars and was sunken and overgrown with blueberry shrubs. There was no headstone, and it looked dismally neglected. Freda felt a sympathy for it. She had no grave, and this grave had nobody to tend it or care ...
— Lucy Maud Montgomery Short Stories, 1904 • Lucy Maud Montgomery
... beside the little brother that had died so long before, and ordered a headstone with some lines which they had found in Australia, written by ...
— The Boys' Life of Mark Twain • Albert Bigelow Paine
... one whose glory had exalted the character of his native land and resounded across the waters of the Atlantic. Philosophers, historians, musicians, warriors, and poets slept side by side around me; some beneath the gorgeous monument, and some beneath the simple headstone. But the political intrigue, the dream of science, the historical research, the ravishing harmony of sound, the tried courage, the inspiration of the lyre—where are they? With the living, and not with the dead! The right hand has lost its cunning in the ...
— The Best of the World's Classics, Restricted to Prose, Vol. X (of X) - America - II, Index • Various
... this they drag across the rough moor by ropes of hide, lightening their labours by the chant, which relates the exploits of the warrior-chief who has lately been entombed in this vast pantheon of Carnac. The menhir shall serve for his headstone. It has been vowed to him by the warriors of his tribe, his henchmen, who have fought and hunted beside him, and who revere his memory. This stone shall render his ...
— Legends & Romances of Brittany • Lewis Spence
... of a mound in sweet Auburn Where a little headstone stood; How the flakes were folding it gently, As did robins the babes ...
— The Complete Poetical Works of James Russell Lowell • James Lowell
... a boy will show you his grave. It is back of the town near a little bridge that spans a mangrove swamp. A plain slab of wood stands at its head. Some one has burned upon the headstone with a hot ...
— Cabbages and Kings • O. Henry
... turned her steps to a grave with a plain headstone. Before leaving England, Joseph Snowdon had discharged this duty. The inscription was simply a name, with dates ...
— The Nether World • George Gissing
... the verse, and to her surprise her aunt answered it with, "'Who art thou, O great mountain? Before Zerubbabel thou shalt become a plain: and he shall bring forth the headstone thereof with shoutings, crying grace! grace unto it.'" Not a word did she offer in explanation; she only twitched the horse's head more emphatically, and did not speak again until she reached the ...
— Miss Ashton's New Pupil - A School Girl's Story • Mrs. S. S. Robbins
... Each grave was covered by a pyramidal mound of sandy earth with a piece of twig stuck in it. Sometimes a tree had been planted and had grown. A child's grave had some tiny bowls of food and a clay doll before a little headstone. By way of shelter for these offerings there was hung on the headstone a peasant's wide straw hat. A large beehive-shaped bamboo basket over another grave was a reminder of the time when a grave needed such protection in order to save ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott
... you anything you crave: A great, high headstone to your grave, A salary, a scarlet coat, A handsome wife, a house, a vote, A title, or a humbled foe." But Sym ...
— The Glugs of Gosh • C. J. Dennis
... cluster living children, and who has sowed in tears the blessed seed, that in the resurrection-morn shall be gathered in beauteous sheaves of richest recompense—would smile in pitying contempt over the tiny headstone which should ...
— At Last • Marion Harland
... years ago, I had a marble headstone put on her grave, which was enclosed with a fence, and last fall I saw it there although buried in weeds. A few weeks ago a lady friend asked me if my mother's name was Jane; for that she had, in walking through the cemetery, come across a stone ...
— Some Reminiscences of old Victoria • Edgar Fawcett
... could scarcely have been Mrs. Buchanan, it was this clerical busybody who was responsible for the inscription on Lola's headstone: ...
— The Magnificent Montez - From Courtesan to Convert • Horace Wyndham
... a neighboring headstone, smiled sardonically. "Lost Chief women have enough to do ...
— Judith of the Godless Valley • Honore Willsie
... fight alone to a chum,—but I'll do it, Bub, because you could not make a quick get-away with me tagging along. Things look murkier in this territory every minute. You'll either have the time of your life, or a headstone early in the game. Billie and I will put it up though we won't know where you're planted. I don't like it, but the minutes and water for the trail are both precious. Come out quick as you ...
— The Treasure Trail - A Romance of the Land of Gold and Sunshine • Marah Ellis Ryan
... out," said Cal, and led them a little distance up the slope, to a level spot in the shadow of a huge, gray bowlder. "That's his headstone," he said, soberly. "The poor devil won't be cheated out uh that, if we can't mark it with his name. It'll last as long as he'll ...
— The Lonesome Trail and Other Stories • B. M. Bower
... her with the Langdon relatives and the little brother, and ordered a headstone with some lines which they had found ...
— Mark Twain, A Biography, 1835-1910, Complete - The Personal And Literary Life Of Samuel Langhorne Clemens • Albert Bigelow Paine
... halfpenny you owe me now. I had to put on another farthing a week because his appetite grew so big. I knew you would rather pay more than see him suffer. And the guinea-pig died. There's twopence extra for funeral expenses. We put him in the orchard beside the dogs, and made a headstone out of your old slate. It's a rattling good idea, because, don't you see, you ...
— Pixie O'Shaughnessy • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey
... child!" he said gently. "Give the lad his due. He was brave that one time. He saved all those lives as it is chiseled on his headstone. It is better he should be remembered for the best act in his life than for the worst one. A man's measure should be taken when he's stretched up to his full height, just as far as he can lift up his head; not when he's stooped to the lowest. ...
— Georgina of the Rainbows • Annie Fellows Johnston
... last. It seems just as much to the point, that youth comes first. And the scale fairly kicks the beam, if you go on to add that age, in a majority of cases, never comes at all. Disease and accident make short work of even the most prosperous persons; death costs nothing, and the expense of a headstone is an inconsiderable trifle to the happy heir. To be suddenly snuffed out in the middle of ambitious schemes, is tragical enough at best; but when a man has been grudging himself his own life in the meanwhile, and saving up everything for the festival ...
— Virginibus Puerisque • Robert Louis Stevenson
... were as much interested in this room as in Shakespeare's birth-place. The remark may have been intensified to flatter an American visitor, but there are few names dearer to the Anglo-Saxon race than that on the plain headstone in the burial-yard of Sleepy Hollow. Sunnyside is scarcely visible to the Day Line tourist. A little gleam of color here and there amid the trees, close to the river bank, near a small boat-house, merely indicates ...
— The Hudson - Three Centuries of History, Romance and Invention • Wallace Bruce
... sees her lone headstone, 'Tis white as a shroud; Like a pall hangs above it The low, ...
— Ishmael - In the Depths • Mrs. E. D. E. N. Southworth
... with her name among the rocks from which the sound proceeded. On my return from my walk I recited those verses to Mary, who was then confined with her son Thomas, who died in his seventh year, as recorded on his headstone in Grasmere Churchyard. ...
— The Prose Works of William Wordsworth • William Wordsworth
... late Captain Thomas Goldsmith, who commanded the Snap Dragon, of Dartmouth, in which vessel he amassed much riches during the reign of Queen Anne, and died, apparently not regretted, in 1714. Engraved upon his headstone are ...
— The Pirates' Who's Who - Giving Particulars Of The Lives and Deaths Of The Pirates And Buccaneers • Philip Gosse
... vault, and passing down the yard, I came to a grave the headstone of which had fallen, and was broken. I turned the two pieces over, and read: "To the memory of Eliza ——." And is this, thought I, the end of the only record of the dear friend of my boyhood; the merry, happy ...
— Life in Canada Fifty Years Ago • Canniff Haight
... through the snow to the spot where he had sat with her so many summer afternoons. The wicker chair was buried out of sight in a drift. A scarcely-visible undulation in the white level marked the position of the mound, and the headstone had a snow-cap. The cedars stood black in the dim moonlight, and the icy coating of their boughs rattled like candelabra. He stood a few moments near the railing, and then tore the letter into fragments and threw ...
— Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Vol. 26, October, 1880 • Various
... The headstone itself bore not a vestige of moss, but time had cracked it diagonally and the chiselled letters were weathered away. He studied it with painful care, poring intently over each faint impression. He who cared for the grave had apparently been troubled only to keep the stone ...
— Trailin'! • Max Brand
... lifetime at Paris, and all that we shall ever know of his place of burial have been established. It is a lasting shame that his remains were not laid in a grave, but were allowed to be put into a trench, with no headstone to mark the site, on one side of a row of graves of others better cared for, from which trench his bones, with those of others unknown and neglected, were exhumed and thrown into the catacombs of Paris. Lamarck left behind him no letters or manuscripts; nothing could be ascertained regarding ...
— Lamarck, the Founder of Evolution - His Life and Work • Alpheus Spring Packard
... widow caused a tender sentiment to be chiseled on the headstone of her husband's grave. The ...
— Jokes For All Occasions - Selected and Edited by One of America's Foremost Public Speakers • Anonymous
... his promise, will (and probably at no very distant day) be my final resting-place after my mortal pilgrimage. [Note: Note, by Mr Jedediah Cleishbotham.—That I kept my plight in this melancholy matter with my deceased and lamented friend, appeareth from a handsome headstone, erected at my proper charges in this spot, bearing the name and calling of Peter Pattieson, with the date of his nativity and sepulture; together also with a testimony of his merits, attested by myself, as his ...
— Old Mortality, Complete, Illustrated • Sir Walter Scott
... the vengeance which by the devising of Zeus those sons[16] of Aphareus suffered: for on the instant came Leto's son[17] in chase of them: and they stood up against him hard by the sepulchre of their father. Thence wrenched they a carved headstone that was set to glorify the dead, and they hurled it at the breast of Polydeukes. But they crushed him not, neither made him give back, but rushing onward with fierce spear he drave the bronze head into Lynkeus' side. And against Idas Zeus hurled a ...
— The Extant Odes of Pindar • Pindar
... cemetery, buy a grave for five years at Pere-Lachaise, and arrange with the Church and the undertaker to have a third-class funeral. If the daughters and their husbands decline to repay you, you can carve this on the headstone—'Here lies M. Goriot, father of the Comtesse de Restaud and the Baronne de Nucingen, interred at ...
— Father Goriot • Honore de Balzac
... truth, as you are to-night, but a man like Thomas Boston's Ettrick elder, who lies waiting the last trump under a gravestone engraven with this legend: Here lies a man who had a brow for every good cause. Only, if you would have that written and read on your headstone, you have no time to lose. If I were you I would not sit another Sabbath under a minister whose preaching was not changing my nature, making my heart new, and transforming my character; no, not though the Queen ...
— Bunyan Characters - Third Series - The Holy War • Alexander Whyte
... would pass through life happy and unnoticed, but the great name of Milton hangs about him like a jest from which he can never escape—no, not even in the grave, for it will be continued there until the lichen has covered the name on the headstone with stealthy ...
— Pebbles on the Shore • Alpha of the Plough (Alfred George Gardiner)
... rear stage. The curtains part. Rear stage is draped in white sheets, with bare trees at R. and L. A grave with carved headstone is at C. Blue lights on this scene. Snow falls. Bells ...
— The White Christmas and other Merry Christmas Plays • Walter Ben Hare
... rescue his mother and sisters, he would at least save them from the horrible fate that he knew awaited them. This resolve involved his death, for he was no match for the men he was contending against. No grave was ever dug for his remains, and no headstone tells the story of his noble resolution and his intrepid effort to ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... under the bridges before Kano Ugichi returns to the bosom of his family," Conway murmured sympathetically. "He's so badly spoiled, Nick, we've decided to call him a total loss and not put up any headstone to his memory. It is Farrel's wish that the matter be forgotten by ...
— The Pride of Palomar • Peter B. Kyne
... graveyard in his sleigh, the bells jingling too merrily by far, I thought; and then to a marble-cutter from whom I bought a headstone to be put up in the spring. I worked out an epitaph which Doctor Mix, who seemed to see through the case pretty well, put into good language, reading as follows: "Here lies the body of Mary Brouwer Vandemark, born in Ulster County, New York, in 1815; ...
— Vandemark's Folly • Herbert Quick
... key of the churchyard gates, and, stepping across the somewhat untidily kept graves, stood before an uneven mound, surrounded by a very old mossgrown headstone. ...
— The Guinea Stamp - A Tale of Modern Glasgow • Annie S. Swan
... Lorrimore, it was that spot that Salter Quick was after—only he wasn't exactly certain where it was, and had somehow got mixed about the graves of the Netherfields. Man alive! yon plate of the old monks is buried under some Netherfield headstone at this minute!" ...
— Ravensdene Court • J. S. (Joseph Smith) Fletcher
... The second expresses the same progress as the development by its own vital energy of the life of Christ in the soul. The third expresses the progress as the addition, by conscious efforts, of portion after portion to the character, which is manifestly incomplete until the headstone crowns the structure. We may then take the passage before us as exhibiting the principles of ...
— Expositions Of Holy Scripture - Volume I: St. Luke, Chaps. I to XII • Alexander Maclaren
... fortune. Then he ran away with another woman. The woman spent his fortune, drove him to dissipation, and when he was dying he came back to Nora, who received him cordially, attended him to the end, and cheered his last hours by singing his own songs to him. Then she raised a headstone recounting his virtues, which were quite numerous, and refraining from any reference to those peculiarities which had caused him to be ...
— The Shape of Fear • Elia W. Peattie
... events—a few months after her mother died—Ailsie and her 'father' (as she always called Mr Openshaw) drove to a cemetery a little way out of town, and she was carried to a certain mound by her maid, who was then sent back to the carriage. There was a headstone, with F.W. and a date upon it. That was all. Sitting by the grave, Mr Openshaw told her the story; and for the sad fate of that poor father whom she had never seen, he shed the only tears she ever saw fall from ...
— Victorian Short Stories, - Stories Of Successful Marriages • Elizabeth Gaskell, et al.
... to the headstone bare, And signs it with a paraph wild, And hangs a wreath of bones to glare Upon ...
— Enamels and Cameos and other Poems • Theophile Gautier
... outside. It was dug on a green slope in a corner of the kirk-yard, where the wall is so low that heath and bilberry-plants have climbed over it from the moor; and peat-mould almost buries it. Her husband lies in the same spot now; and they have each a simple headstone above, and a plain grey block at their feet, ...
— Wuthering Heights • Emily Bronte
... other at right angles. At the famous "White Hart" Newman wrote the opening part of the Lyra Apostolica while awaiting the Exeter coach in December, 1832. The great tower of All Hallows still stands, but little besides of the old building. While the restoration was in progress a Saxon headstone was brought to light. It bears a presentment of our Lord's head with the ...
— Wanderings in Wessex - An Exploration of the Southern Realm from Itchen to Otter • Edric Holmes
... with the smell of seaweed. At my feet spread the great churchyard, with its hundreds of little green hillocks and white gravestones, sprinkled here and there with square, box-like tombs. All quietly asleep in the moonlight! Here and there an aged headstone seemed to nod to its neighbour, as though muttering in its dreams. The old church, bathed in the radiance, seemed larger than it had ever done in daylight, and incomparably more ...
— Aylwin • Theodore Watts-Dunton
... part the endless alignment of monuments seemed to embody those easy generalizations about death that do not disturb the repose of the living. Glennard's eye, as he followed the way indicated to him, had instinctively sought some low mound with a quiet headstone. He had forgotten that the dead seldom plan their own houses, and with a pang he discovered the name he sought on the cyclopean base of a granite shaft rearing its aggressive height at ...
— The Touchstone • Edith Wharton
... my eye fell upon the form of a kneeling child,—at the farther end of the burial-ground, beside a grave with its new headstone gleaming white amidst the older moss-grown tombs, a female child, her head bowed, her hands clasped. I could see but the outline of her small form in its sable dress,—an infant beside the dead. My eye and my thoughts ...
— A Strange Story, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton
... the little headstone, with its rather lengthy epitaph, which marked the resting-place of this woman's only child; and then to the tall shaft whereon was engraved just "John Charteris." The latter inscription was very characteristic of her view-point, he reflected; and yet reasonable, ...
— The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck - A Comedy of Limitations • James Branch Cabell
... initials cut by English remarkable visitors desirous of immortality, here and there about the edifice, but Robert the builder—or at least the Master of building, cut his on no stone of it. Only when, after his death, the headstone had been brought forth with shouting, Grace unto it, this following legend was written, recording all who had part or lot in the labour, within the middle of the labyrinth then inlaid in the pavement of the nave. You must read ...
— Our Fathers Have Told Us - Part I. The Bible of Amiens • John Ruskin
... oven. There is nothing pretty to look at—even in mirrors there is nothing cool and pretty. Clothes grow lumpy when she puts them on. Boys giggle and call names when she goes out. And so, outcast, she comes here to the cemetery to dream of a day when something cool and pretty will belong to her. A headstone, perhaps a stately one with a figure above it. It will stand over her. She will be dead then and unable to enjoy it. But now she is alive. Now she can think of how pretty the stone will look and thus enjoy it in advance. This, after all, is ...
— A Thousand and One Afternoons in Chicago • Ben Hecht
... was quite overcome; he leant upon a headstone and stared at Felix without speaking, and then it was a sort of soliloquy. 'To think of poor dear Master Eddard's son being come to that! and he looking a dozen times more like a clergyman and a gentleman than ever ...
— The Pillars of the House, V1 • Charlotte M. Yonge
... at all. Oh, Catherine, it is best for me go hang myself out of a tree, and my carcass to be torn by savage dogs that went famished through a great length of time, and my bones left without a token or a flag or a headstone, and my name that was up at one time to be forgotten out of mind! (He ...
— New Irish Comedies • Lady Augusta Gregory
... the deep window seat beside him, where with my head on a level, and within a foot of his, I could see everything in the whole room. I don't know why I ever spent any time pining for the beauties of Georgiana Jane Titcomb's grave, even with its handsome headstone on which was carved a lamb standing on three feet and holding a banner over its shoulder with the fourth, and the geraniums, roses, and the weeping willow that grew over it, thrown in. I might have trusted Laddie. He never had forgotten me; ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter
... grave-stones slanted at crazy angles through the snow. Ethan looked at them curiously. For years that quiet company had mocked his restlessness, his desire for change and freedom. "We never got away—how should you?" seemed to be written on every headstone; and whenever he went in or out of his gate he thought with a shiver: "I shall just go on living here till I join them." But now all desire for change had vanished, and the sight of the little enclosure gave him a warm ...
— Ethan Frome • Edith Wharton |
