Idle Hour Stories
through the horse he rode. He was a gallant officer. They thought at first he would rally. The surgeons did their work quickly, and he suffered little or no pain, but there was no chloroform in that day, and he died from the shock. The snow was deep on the ground, but it was a grand funeral. They've got a fine new cemetery out on the hill, but we never go there. Our dead are all here where we can see their graves." 

 "Graves," came the echo, they had all along nodded, or murmured, assent. 

 [pg 18] 

[pg 18]

 "One of the saddest funerals we have ever seen." Miss Chrissy went on, "was a double funeral. Two young men, both only sons, were drowned in the river while bathing. Their mothers were widows. It was terrible. Two hearses and two long lines of mourners. There they lie—over there in that enclosure. They were cousins, and were buried side by side." 

 "The mothers, Chrissy!" mildly prompted the whisper, when the narrator paused. 

 "Yes, the mothers! one died of a broken heart, and the other lost her mind outright. She is living yet, an old woman, who regularly goes to the front door of the asylum every morning and takes her seat. If it is cold weather, she sits inside. She asks every one who enters if Luther is coming—that was her boy's name." 

 "Did you know the first Mrs. John Hunt, Miss Chrissy—my husband's grandmother?" I asked, willing to change the gloomy subject. 

 "Just as well as I know you, Mrs. John. She was a beautiful little woman, I was very young at the time I am thinking of. She sent at night for an embroidered flannel I was doing. It was my first wide pattern, and it went slow. At 10 o'clock it was finished, and my father went with me to take it home. They were all going to Washington to the President's ball—President Monroe, it was—and the trunk was  [pg 19]                                                     packing. It was to go on the big traveling-coach. When I ran up stairs and knocked,—I had often been there before—she opened the door herself. 'Oh, it's you Chrissy,' she said in her pleasant way; 'come in child; don't you want to see something pretty?' And she showed me two elegant brocaded silk gowns, very narrow and very short-waisted, but stiff enough to stand alone.' 

[pg 19]

 "She praised my work and said I was a good girl. Then she paid me the money and 
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