person whose body lies under the stone. Had the sextons placed over the graves permanent records of the three great events which constitute the important part of many lives, birth, marriage, and death, — it would often aid the searcher after lineage, when the human posts with memory-marks had all been swept away by the merciless besom of time. Our generation has a better chance of leaving individual records on the blank pages in the grave-yard of Jewish history furnished us by the Bible societies; which records may be of more value to coming generations than the printed pages, when the march of science has carried away the idolatry and superstition of this age, and the centuries have removed the tall steeples and stingy creeds of the nineteenth Christian century. But we must still grope among the tomb-records, to renew the search after the lineage of the Lone One. We find the records of both grave-yards very imperfect, from which we can only glean sufficient to make out the following: In the third, fourth, or fifth generation of these three brothers, among the descendants of the one of them who bore the singular cognomen of Aquila, was a family of eight children-four sons and four daughters. The younger of the four sons joined a small group of hardy pioneers, who had procured a title to a piece of God's earth (from some regular descendant of the original owner, as is supposed by the land reformers, who assert that God never gave any "fee simple" title-deeds, but only heirships), then far up in the wild regions of New Hampshire, on a small stream now called Suncook. Near the middle of the eighteenth century this little group began to fell the tall old pines and sorry-looking hemlocks, and let down the sunlight and dews upon the soil and rocks (mostly rocks) of this little spot of their heavenly Father's earth; or rather on their own spot, for they had bought a few acres of surface running inward to a point at the centre of the globe, but not outward, for the atmosphere and sunlight were still owned by the Father, and free for the use of all his children. They arranged the trees across the rattling Suncook, and, the river being dammed and heaped up, its waters, in their wrath, plunged, foaming in madness, over the obstacle, such as no red man had ever placed in their way; or, forced through the narrow aperture, for many years turned a clattering old mill-wheel, to make boards for the settlers; or, twirling the circular and poised rock, cracked the corn for the lesser grinders of the bipeds. Long ago the mill was "torn away, and a factory dark and high looms like a tower" beside the stream. How changed the place in a century! And what is a century in the midst of eternal time? Not even as a drop in the ocean. The red man and his fur-clad quadruped companions are gone [where ?]; and civilized man, with his domesticated animals and labor-saving machinery, his cottage homes, his noisy shops, and busy stores, has taken their place, and driven them, not to, but beyond, the wall. Wonder often seized the red man, as he watched his white Cainlike brothers fell the trees, remove the rocks, till the soil, build warmer wigwams, and plant more "heap of corn;" but he passed in wonder away, stupefied in soul, and poisoned in body, by the rum and tobacco of God's whiter Christian children. Now the spires of the Puritan's descendants point upward in place of the red man's forest spires, from which, two centuries ago, the prayers and praises of man and beast were sounded to the sky in simple strains of nature's music, as acceptable to God as the best harinonies of our time. Now the slender fingers of the factory-girl guide the cotton thread, through whirling machinery, into webs of sheeting, to wrap the more tender forms of the white mother's babes of a Christian land; but it is not certain that these babes or mothers live purer lives, or give more pure devotion to God, than did the fur-clad mothers and naked babes of the forest-homes; and certain it is that the belief in a future life entertained by the red man of the forest was far more natural, more rational, more honorable to God, and more desirable to man, than that of the Christian which has supplanted it. Soon after a shanty was prepared by this descendant of Aquila wide enough for two, the loved one, selected from the daughters of a neighboring settlement, came to share its hardships with the occupant. Not a score of moons had been reported, new or old, ere the pair had to make room for a third, a darling boy, whose origin was between them; the first white face of male child born in the settlement, and of course it would have a place and name. Simon (not Simon Peter) was the cognomen by which this shanty boy was designated from his fellows. When peopling the settlement by births was fairly begun, it was not carried on slowly in the several homes, but especially in this one. The family record was soon filled up; for Simon's name was followed by eleven more, marking, as milestones, the line of domestic life, nearly in biennial periods. Seven received female names, rights, and duties, and five male names, rights, and duties. The eldest, born when the trials and hardships of life were most severe, was of course the brightest and smartest, although the parents were less developed and matured than at the birth of Joseph (for they had a Joseph). Two of the dozen went early and young to reside on the other side of Jordan, "to join. "to join a choir of juvenile singers in the land of spirits." Four more have since followed them, at various times, and six were still lingering here in the autumn of 1855, timeworn humanity-marks of the last century, and of the generation which has been mainly transplanted into the other life. The old pioneer parents, too, whose hold on life enabled them to stay almost a century on earth, and live more than half a century in wedded life, have joined those, who, according to the new theory of spirit-spheres, are living in families and societies of harmonious and congenial life in the land of the dead. 'Tis a beautiful thought, whether true or not, for the lone pilgrim here, that, at the end of life's journey, he or she shall lay the "staff and sandals down" for the wreath and robe of a brighter and happier home, and join there, in happy life, the "loved ones gone before." We have now done nearly all we can to register the genealogy of the Lone One, and will here leave the ancestors, all except the first-born of the sons of the new settlement. Of him we have more to say, for, in matured life, he became the father of the Lone One, by a mother fully ripened into womanhood; the last child of each, and the only child of the twain. This Simon-son, of the Pittsfield town, has now no tomb-stone monument to mark where his body lies, and no epitaph inscribed to record his religious belief, or pious character; but only the memory-marks made, during his life, on those around him which have not faded. His parents, and brothers, and sisters, all accorded to him the qualification of good and smart; but his early life had not the advantage of schools, and books, and sermons, and lectures, as the youth of our time have. Hard work by day-light, and rude plays by fire-light, occupied his youth, and the former did not cease when manhood came. Those still living who knew him say he was physically and mentally more than a common man, and morally not less, but religiously at zero. Many of his trite sayings, and some of his doings, still linger around the memories of those who knew him half a century ago. Such were the father and the paternal lineage of the Lone One, which, with one more brief notice in its proper place, must be left to the fast-fading shadows of memory; for lineal descents are difficult to trace, and not very reliable when written. When forty years had worn away upon the records, these were nearly all the links the Lone One could find in the chain to connect him, through his sire, with the Puritan Fathers. The great fortune said to be waiting some heir in name and line had never arrested his attention, for he was not registered in the records of lineal descent, but dwelt alone, and away from all kindred of name and descent from Aquila. It is doubtful whether, if he had died before this record was published, or before the days of modern spiritualism, he could have received a Christian burial, with head to the west, to meet at the resurrection of the bodies, the Saviour, who is to come from the east, when the trump of the angel shall call up the dead and decayed forms from the earth. But he has already outlived most of the follies, superstitions, and prejudices, of the Christians, and expects at death to find a home with the spirits, if not with the Christians, of the other world, and not so cold and unwelcome a reception as he found in this world. SECTION II. THE MOTHER AND CHILD. Silently, strangely, the darkness And the hands of no earthly morning "And yet in a world of sunshine Thou seemest to dwell the while; "And much for that one affliction Shall this recompense atone. "For when human love shall leave thee, Then the hands of invisible angels Shall softly lead thee on. "And their arms shall be round about thee, Till thy feet through that gate have trod “And then what an over-payment For the night of thy mortal ills, Shall come with the light of that morning ON the fifth day of the first month of the eighteen hundred and thirteen, at the opening of the morning light upon the snow-clad hills and vales of New England, a poor, lonely, and sorry mother, with a newly-born and unwelcome babe, might have been seen in an old, shattered, and oft-deserted house, through which the winter winds and New England snow-storms played almost unobstructed; a house long since gone to "dust and ashes," leaving only the hole in the ground to mark the spot where its frame once protect |