owners when the coffin should be placed in the hearse--a plain black
wagon, with black cloth curtains--waiting at the door. The coffin was
taken up by them, and deposited accordingly; after which, they took
their places in front of the hearse, while the four pall-bearers
ranged themselves on each side. At a signal from the director of the
ceremony, the whole moved forward, leaving space for the carriages
to approach the door. Mr. Armstrong's carriage was driven up, and the
widow and children, with two or three females, were assisted in. Then
followed a few other vehicles, with the nearest relatives, after whom
came others, as they pleased to join. A large number of persons had
previously formed themselves into a procession before the hearse,
headed by the minister, who would have been accompanied by a
physician, had one assisted in making poor Sill's passage to the other
world easier.

The mournful cortége wound slowly up a hill to the burying-ground--a
piece of broken land on the top. At the time of which we write, the
resting-place of the departed of Hillsdale presented a different
appearance from what it does now. Wild, neglected, overgrown with
briers, it looked repulsive to the living, and unworthy of the dead.
The tender sentiment which associates beauty with the memory of
our friends, and loves to plant the evergreen and rose around their
graves, seemed then not to have touched the bosoms of our people. A
pleasing change has succeeded. The briars have been removed, trees
planted, and when necessary to be laid out, new burial-ground spots
have been selected remarkable for attractiveness and susceptibility
of improvement. The brook has been led in and conducted in tortuous
paths, as if to lull with a soft hymn the tired sleepers, and then
expanded into a fairy lake, around which the weeping willow lets fall
its graceful pendants. The white pine, the various species of firs,