Young Mrs. Prince's return and sudden death were the only
subjects worth talking about in all the country side, and the doctor
had to run the usual gauntlet of questions from all his outlying
patients and their families. Old Mrs. Thacher looked pale and excited,
and insisted upon seeing every one who came to the house, with evident
intention to play her part in this strange drama with exactness and
courtesy. A funeral in the country is always an era in a family's
life; events date from it and centre in it. There are so few
circumstances that have in the least a public nature that these
conspicuous days receive all the more attention.
But while death seems far more astonishing and unnatural in a city,
where the great tide of life rises and falls with little apparent
regard to the sinking wrecks, in the country it is not so. The
neighbors themselves are those who dig the grave and carry the dead,
whom they or their friends have made ready, to the last resting-place.
With all nature looking on,--the leaves that must fall, and the grass
of the field that must wither and be gone when the wind passes
over,--living closer to life and in plainer sight of death, they have
a different sense of the mysteries of existence. They pay homage to
Death rather than to the dead; they gather from the lonely farms by
scores because there is a funeral, and not because their friend is
dead; and the day of Adeline Prince's burial, the marvelous
circumstances, with which the whole town was already familiar, brought
a great company together to follow her on her last journey.
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