Democratic Sentinel, Volume 17, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 14 April 1893 — WHIT[?????] GRAVE. [ARTICLE]

WHIT[?????] GRAVE.

St Um ia a Neglected Cemetivy O»» grown with Bank Weeds. £d accordance with the simplicity which had marked his life, the poet Whittier wished his funeral to be conducted and his last resting place oared for. But it would seem as if his grave was not preserved with that care and vespeot which it deserves. The poet lies in an old and dilapidated cemetery at Amesbury, Mass., where rank weeds and decaying trunks of scrub trees lying where they have fallen give the place an unkempt and unsightly appearance. No care is seemingly taken of the spot by any one. Whittier’s lot is a long, rectangular one surrounded by a hedge of scrub pines. Seven plain headstones occupy the southern half of the rectangle. Each stone has a name of one of the poet’s family engraved on it with the date of birth and death. Directly in the center of the lot is the poet’s new-made grave, overshadowed by a pine tree. The hedge around the grave is neat and orderly and well trimmed save in one spot. And that is directly in the center, just on a line with the new-made grave. Here twigs and branches have been rudely broken off until the symmetry of the hedge is utterly destroyed. The pine tree in the center has also ° tffered severely. Evidently the relic-, inter had been at work here. Disappointed in his search for a tombstone to violate he had wrecked his revenge on the surrounding foliage. The grave is wholly unprotected, and who ever would could violate it. Even on the day of the poet’s funeral people pressed into the lot and robbed the grave of all the flowers heaped upon it, and it was not until a policeman was dispatched there that the crowd could be Induced to stop their thieving. Whittier expressly stated before hie death that he wished to have no different sort of a monument from that which marked the graves of his relatives. He left a small sum, however, to keep in order that part of the cemetery where he was burled and so very likely, in time, the visitor may notice an improvement there.