`` She is dead , poor girl ! '' said he , interrupting the tune which he was whistling , `` and she chose a good piece of stuff for her headstone . Now , which of these slabs would you like best to see your own name upon ? '' `` Why , to tell you the truth , my good Mr. Wigglesworth , '' replied I , after a moment 's pause , for the abruptness of the question had somewhat startled me -- `` to be quite sincere with you , I care little or nothing about a stone for my own grave , and am somewhat inclined to scepticism as to the propriety of erecting monuments at all over the dust that once was human . The weight of these heavy marbles , though unfelt by the dead corpse or the enfranchised soul , presses drearily upon the spirit of the survivor and causes him to connect the idea of death with the dungeon-like imprisonment of the tomb , instead of with the freedom of the skies . Every gravestone that you ever made is the visible symbol of a mistaken system . Our thoughts should soar upward with the butterfly , not linger with the exuviæ that confined him . In truth and reason , neither those whom we call the living , and still less the departed , have anything to do with the grave . '' `` I never heard anything so heathenish , '' said Mr. Wigglesworth , perplexed and displeased at sentiments which controverted all his notions and feelings and implied the utter waste , and worse , of his whole life 's labor . `` Would you forget your dead friends the moment they are under the sod ? '' `` They are not under the sod , '' I rejoined ; `` then why should I mark the spot where there is no treasure hidden ? Forget them ? No ; but , to remember them aright , I would forget what they have cast off . And to gain the truer conception of death I would forget the grave . '' But still the good old sculptor murmured , and stumbled , as it were , over the gravestones amid which he had walked through life . Whether he were right or wrong , I had grown the wiser from our companionship and from my observations of nature and character as displayed by those who came , with their old griefs or their new ones , to get them recorded upon his slabs of marble . And yet with my gain of wisdom I had likewise gained perplexity ; for there was a strange doubt in my mind whether the dark shadowing of this life , the sorrows and regrets , have not as much real comfort in them -- leaving religious influences out of the question -- as what we term life 's joys . THE SHAKER BRIDAL . One day , in the sick-chamber of Father Ephraim , who had been forty years the presiding elder over the Shaker settlement at Goshen , there was an assemblage of several of the chief men of the sect . Individuals had come from the rich establishment at Lebanon , from Canterbury , Harvard and Alfred , and from all the other localities where this strange people have fertilized the rugged hills of New England by their systematic industry .
An elder was likewise there who had XXXXX a pilgrimage of a thousand miles from a village of the faithful in Kentucky to visit his spiritual kindred the children of the sainted Mother Ann .
came cast confined forget inclined made mark recorded rejoined whistling