"I asked the night porter, who was still on duty, the way I wanted to
take, but there were so many people in the streets going the same
direction that I couldn't have missed it, anyhow; and pretty soon we
came to the old Moravian cemetery, which was in the heart of the town;
and there we found most of the Moravian congregation drawn up on three
sides of the square, waiting and facing the east, which was beginning to
redden. Of all the cemeteries I have seen, that was the most beautiful,
because it was the simplest and humblest. Generally a cemetery is a
dreadful place, with headstones and footstones and shafts and tombs
scattered about, and looking like a field full of granite and marble
stumps from the clearing of a petrified forest. But here all the
memorial tablets lay flat with the earth. None of the dead were assumed
to be worthier of remembrance than another; they all rested at regular
intervals, with their tablets on their breasts, like shields, in their
sleep after the battle of life. I was thinking how right and wise this
was, and feeling the purity of the conception like a quality of the
keen, clear air of the morning, which seemed to be breathing straight
from the sky, when suddenly the sun blazed up from the horizon like a
fire, and the instant it appeared the horns of the band began to blow
and the people burst into a hymn--a thousand voices, for all I know.
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