apoplexy on Friday evening, three days before, and had lain insensible
till Saturday night, when he expired. The burial took place at Mount
Auburn on the ensuing Tuesday. It was a gloomy day; for the first
snowstorm of the season had been drifting through the air since morning;
and the "Garden of Graves" looked the dreariest spot on earth. The snow
came down so fast, that it covered the coffin in its passage from the
hearse to the sepulchre. The few male friends who had followed to the
cemetery descended into the tomb; and it was there that I took my last
glance at the features of a man who will hold a place in my remembrance
apart from other men. He was like no other. In his long pathway
through life, from his cradle to the place where we had now laid him, he
had come, a man indeed in intellect and achievement, but, in guileless
simplicity, a child. Dark would have been the hour, if, when we closed
the door of the tomb upon his perishing mortality, we had believed that
our friend was there.

It is contemplated to erect a monument, by subscription, to Mr.
Fessenden's memory. It is right that he should be thus honored. Mount
Auburn will long remain a desert, barren of consecrated marbles, if
worth like his be yielded to oblivion. Let his grave be marked out,
that the yeomen of New England may know where he sleeps; for he was
their familiar friend, and has visited them at all their firesides. He
has toiled for them at seed-time and harvest: he has scattered the good
grain in every field; and they have garnered the increase. Mark out his
grave as that of one worthy to be remembered both in the literary and
political annals of our country, and let the laurel be carved on his
memorial stone; for it will cover the ashes of a man of genius.