It was about the same season of the year, and at near the same hour
of the day, of my last visit. The jays clamored loudly, and the
trees whispered darkly, as before; and I somehow traced in the two
sounds a fanciful analogy to the open boastfulness of Mr. Jo.
Dunfer's mouth and the mysterious reticence of his manner, and to the
mingled hardihood and tenderness of his sole literary production--the
epitaph. All things in the valley seemed unchanged, excepting the
cow-path, which was almost wholly overgrown with weeds. When we came
out into the "clearing," however, there was change enough. Among the
stumps and trunks of the fallen saplings, those that had been hacked
"China fashion" were no longer distinguishable from those that were
cut "'Melican way." It was as if the Old-World barbarism and the
New-World civilization had reconciled their differences by the
arbitration of an impartial decay--as is the way of civilizations.
The knoll was there, but the Hunnish brambles had overrun and all but
obliterated its effete grasses; and the patrician garden-violet had
capitulated to his plebeian brother--perhaps had merely reverted to
his original type. Another grave--a long, robust mound--had been
made beside the first, which seemed to shrink from the comparison;
and in the shadow of a new headstone the old one lay prostrate, with
its marvelous inscription illegible by accumulation of leaves and
soil. In point of literary merit the new was inferior to the old--
was even repulsive in its terse and savage jocularity:


JO. DUNFER. DONE FOR.


I turned from it with indifference, and brushing away the leaves from
the tablet of the dead pagan restored to light the mocking words