Digital heart book

The
whole monotonous Babel had grown--or, I should rather
say, swelled--with such a leap since my departure that
I must continually inquire my way; and the very
cemetery was brand-new. Death, however, had been
active; the graves were already numerous, and I must
pick my way in the rain among the tawdry sepulchres of
millionaires, and past the plain black crosses of
Hungarian labourers, till chance or instinct led me to
the place that was my father's. The stone had been
erected (I knew already) "by admiring friends"; I could
now judge their taste in monuments. Their taste in
literature, methought, I could imagine, and I refrained
from drawing near enough to read the terms of the
inscription. But the name was in larger letters and
stared at me--JAMES K. DODD. "What a singular
thing is a name!" I thought; "how it clings to a man,
and continually misrepresents, and then survives him!"
And it flashed across my mind, with a mixture of regret
and bitter mirth, that I had never known, and now
probably never should know, what the K had represented.


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129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153