CHAPTER 15I often think the dead in our town lie in a fairer place than the living. It is often so along our coast. They are on a high bit of ground close to the harbor, so that you can see their resting places from the decks as soon as you pass the first buoy, and when you climb from the street the dunes and the ocean catch your eye, and there is hardly a tombstone that does not stare blindly out to sea. Even in midsummer the grass is brown about them, for it is a sandy place and swept by the wind. It was quiet as I climbed up the West Hill that morning. The sun was already high and I was quite alone. It was beating down on the rows of slate headstones, making their inscriptions as clear as the letters of the judgment book, terse and austere summaries of vanished endeavors. In the days th
