"And the time drew nigh that Israel must die; and he called his son Joseph, and said unto him, if now I have found grace in thy sight put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh and deal kindly and truly with me; bury me not, I pray thee, in Egypt; but I will lie with my fathers, and thou shalt carry me out of Egypt and bury me in their burying place. And he said, I will do as thou hast said. And he said, swear unto me. And he sware unto him. And Israel bowed himself upon the bed's head." After the reading had ended, addressing those around him, in pathetic imitation of the patriarch, he said: "All of you lay your hands upon my thigh, and promise me that you will not bury me here, but will take my remains to Washington county, and there bury me by the side of my parents." Says Mrs. Riley, "We promised. After this, he patiently waited for that guest whose coming no longer had terror for him. The State, meantime, was agitated by a presidential campaign. Politicians traveled their usual stages, and stirred partisan feeling to its depths. The hosts he had led in polit ical conflict, were marshaled by other leaders, yet, he was not unobservant of current events, nor lacking interest in their result. He was fond of hearing what was taking place and what the outlook portended. His sense of the comical also existed to the last hours of life, as the following incident illustrates: "A few days before his death," says General Preston, "in company with some friends, I called upon him. I found that he had great anxiety about the state of the Whig party, of which he was a member. He was not a little distrustful of Mr. Fillmore, who was then enjoying the last term vouchsafed to a Whig president. He seemed perfectly tranquil, though in some pain, and insisted on knowing all the political news of the day. Several of his friends present, in sympathy with his condition, were wearing long countenances, when the topic came up of the appointment of Colonel Humphrey Marshall as minister to China. Mr. Hardin, assuming a very grave look, expressed his fears that it was a fatal mistake on the part of Mr. Fillmore. Some one of the company inquired the reason why. Mr. Hardin replied, that many years before he had read the account of the English embassy of Lord. Macartney to China, from which court he was sent away because he could not perform the kowtow, or court genuflexion; that it was true that for purposes of commerce, the emperor had allowed various hongs to the barbarian nations, and, among others, one each to England and America, but that the jurisdictional lines of these hongs were of remarkably limited extent; and that by the terms of the compact, if any foreigner wandered beyond his proper hong, he was punished with great torments, or decapitation. Mr. Hardin continued, that from what he could learn of the size of the United States hong, it was already too narrow for the accommodation of the Yankee merchants congregated there, and that if Colonel Marshall (who was of great corporal ponderosity), went into it, that he could not possibly perform the kowtow (as he was more than three feet in diameter), without causing the Yankee merchants to violate the jurisdictional line, which would lead to their arrest and execution, and this again to a sanguinary war between the United States and the Flowery Kingdom, which might bring the belligerents, before its termination, into hopeless ruin. He could forgive Mr. Fillmore many things, and did forgive him, but could never forgive him if he departed from the wisdom of Washington, and involved us in such an unnecessary struggle when it was so easy for him to find a thinner embassador. "The seriousness of the dying humorist, during this narration, upset the gravity of his surrounding friends." Neighborly watchers at his bedside as time went on discussed politics and the common-place events of life in respectful undertone. The weary September days slowly wore away, scattering autumnal tints over field and forest. That persistent insect minstrelsy in the grass and trees on the lawn, that had monotonously broken the silence of the summer nights, floated into the sick room more faintly, as the singers. sang their last requiem. The sounds of life came less distinctly to the ear of the sufferer. His faculties became mercifully benumbed as the hour for their overthrow approached. He talked very little, yet, what he did say was not only rational, but showed that his thoughts were less of this world than of that better one, for which he hoped and waited. A day or so before his death, he called a little grandson to his bedside, and, laying his hand upon his head, said: "Jacob blessed his sons, and why shall I not bless you? I bless you, my son, and may God Almighty bless you." "One night," says Mrs. Riley, "as he lay so quietly as to render it doubtful whether he was awake or slept, I asked him if he desired anything. 'No,' he replied, 'no-nothing but glory, and I have that.'' On Friday, September 24, 1852, rational and conscious to the last, surrounded by children, grandchildren, and friends, he peacefully and quietly fell into that sleep that knows no earthly waking. Thus this man of bright humor, this skillful lawyer, powerful orator, and wise statesman, at the end of his long career, met death in the meek and trusting fashion befitting a descendant of the exiled Huguenots. It is often said of those who die before age or disease have abated the natural powers of body or mind that death is untimely. It could be said of Mr. Hardin, at least, that his mental force had shown no sign of decay or diminution. He fell as falls the strong warrior in the full tide of victorious battle. There was no decrepit interval between the end of his career and the end of his life. Is it not a blessed mercy to go thus suddenly down to death, rather than linger a dotard on the margin of life, and by the infirmities of a common humanity blur the picture of one's strength and genius? "May it please the Giver of all good," said John Quincy Adams, "to guard me from the disgrace of dishonoring my last days by loitering too long upon the stage." "There is a certain dignity," says Henry Mackenzie, "in retiring from life at a time when the infirmities of age have not sapped our faculties." It adds a charm to the story of Him who was God manifest in the flesh that, judged by mortal standards, He passed from earth in the full perfection of all intellectual and physical powers, and to the devotee to-day that glorified face looks down with its manly beauty all unchanged after the lapse of eighteen centuries. Reverently, be it said, that it is fortunate for Mr. Hardin's memory that his intellectual manhood never fell into ruin, but while still shining in meridian splendor was suddenly and irrevocably eclipsed by the shadow of death. Thus ending life is, indeed, not dying—it is spiritual translation. The soul is only a tenant changing houses. “Then steal away, give little warning, Say not good night,' but in some brighter clime, Memoirs, Vol. IX., page 187. The Man of Feeling, page 184. CHAPTER XLI. CONCLUSION. S OME religionists believe and teach that the good of the soul after death requires that the body rest in consecrated ground. Our English and Scotch ancestors buried their dead in the church-yards of their respective parishes. A similar custom prevailed in some of the American colonies, which has not been interrupted by the great changes on this continent since transpiring. The Protestant, no less than the Catholic, believed-and very largely still believe-that Christian burial can only be found in places expressly consecrated by rites and ceremonies, or hallowed by the dust of kindred and loved ones. The pioneers of Kentucky, and the South and West-meeting death untimely on the battle-field-from foes in ambuscade or other frontier peril, or in their beds in their rude and scattered homes, "when their appointed time came," were content to be laid anywhere beneath the sod. Public cemeteries were rare, and practically inaccessible. Churches and their appendant burial places were widely scattered; and so, in default of any other, the early settler selected a spot on his own lands, near his dwelling, which was set apart as a "grave-yard." As members of his family died, they were laid there. It was a soothing thought to the parting spirit that the mortal body would lie in close association with those loved in life. It mitigated the silence, desolation, and gloom of the grave, to reflect that near by slept a father, a brother, or a child-and not far away were the sights and sounds of the old home! The silent sunbeam of the morning first kissed those green mounds in its swift flight to the door ajar in "mother's room," and at evening, the gentle zephyr, straying wearily from the west, crept down in the ivy and whispered lullabies to the dead. A recent author, thus refers to this American custom of private burial places: "In the scattered population of Virginia, churchyard burial became impossible. In its place, grew up the habit of interring the dead beside the homestead. This ground, consecrated by the dust of the family, was the last possession parted with; indeed, it almost always remained in the possession of the kindred to the farthest generation. So it came about that for a decent man to own no acres that might receive his dust was something that appealed strongly to his fellows. It is a social instinct, peculiar to the South ern States of this Union."* Somewhat uncared for, and sometimes forgotten, are the dwelling places of these silent families whom death has not divided. But they will need neither obelisk nor epitaph to commemorate their names with a worthy posterity. On the farm, in Washington county, where Mr. Hardin's parents had settled on coming to Kentucky, in 1788, their bodies had long been laid to rest. Others of his family, dying before him, had been interred in the public cemetery at Bardstown, Mrs. Hardin being the last. By the side of his parents, in a spot marked by evergreen trees (and, of late, by some intrusive locusts, in addition), in an old and neglected field, near the public road from Springfield to Lebanon, a few miles from the former, stands a stone, bearing as its sole inscription: "Ben Hardin, of Bardstown." There his dust now reposes. The memorial stones he had erected to his wife and his children, had been marked with their names only. His own monument was so inscribed, in accordance with his known wishes and simple tastes. Nothing could have been more repugnant to him than an ill-devised epitaph, or a pretentious and insincere posthumous eulogy. "Some years after his death," writes Mrs. Riley, "a committee of gentlemen waited on my husband, to obtain my consent to the removal of his body to the cemetery at Frankfort, where it was proposed to erect a monument to his memory. I related the circumstance of the promise, and this ended the matter."† In Westminster Abbey, for several centuries past, England has garnered the dust of her great and famous children, until something of the atmosphere of genius and glory hovers about “the solid pillars, the ponderous arches, the huge edifice with triple tower and sculptured stones, and storied windows." Kentucky has no Westminster Abbey, but, instead, has buried a goodly host of pioneers, soldiers, statesmen, and scholars in her cemetery at Frankfort, the State capital. The cemetery is situated on a slightly undulating plateau, on Kentucky river, where the shore springs abruptly several hundred feet above its limpid waters. If the field of Macpelah, which Abraham bought for a burying-place, was anything like it, the anxiety of Jacob not to be buried in the sands or catacombs of Egypt * Kentucky-a Pioneer Commonwealth, by Professor N. S. Shaler, page 156. † See Chapter XL. Dean Stanley. |