An Evening Drive

MR. EDITOR:  I have been reconnoitering, in force, in the vicinity of Davenport, and as in duty bound, report to headquarters.  Perhaps my document will be unacceptable, as I have nothing to report respecting slaughter and desolation, of broken cohorts, and flying phalanxes of Parrott’s and Dahlgren’s belching forth their iron hail, and mimicking thunders of heaven.  I speak but of Davenport and its surroundings.

I have been visiting the cemeteries, the home of the departed, in which all feel interested.  This is a pleasant and befitting season to visit our cemeteries, when vegetation is regaining its strength and the balmy breath of the advancing spring is driving back to its polar empire, the savage and unrelenting blasts of an invading winter which has plundered and laid waste the charms of the vegetable kingdom, and annihilated for a time the flowery nations.

I set out from Davenport with one of livery Smith’s best teams, piloted by his trusty man Friday.  We headed for Bridge Avenue – Mount Ida soon loomed majestically in sight.  Alas, Mount Ida! she appears in a wintery state; the painter and gardener have forsaken or neglected her; yet I feel a reverence for Mount Ida, for here in ’58 I undertook to master music and astronomy!  Now the then eighty merry students, as well as the worthy but unrewarded and neglected Codding, have disappeared, and the district school mistress, with a small class, occupies the then classic premises.  Fair schoolmates, whose merry laugh then gladdened the hearts of all, where are you?  Some perhaps have gone to the cold and silent tomb; others, with bitter tears, are contrasting the bright tints of girlhood’s morning with the dark somber hues of despair, that now in dusky folds, wraps their aching hearts.  All here now appears dreary, desolate and sad, yet a spirit of prophecy tells me that Mount Ida will yet fulfill her destiny and become a first class institution for the education of the young ladies of Iowa.  The location is beautiful, situated on the summit of the bluff some one hundred and twenty feet above the lower plain, overlooking the most might of rivers, the majestic Father of Waters.  Once Beautiful Ida,

Where the willow boughs entwining,

Cast a shadow o’er the plain,

In her classic shades reclining,

Genius will return again.

Leaving Mount Ida to the southward, we drove over hill and dale, upon nature’s primitive carpet of green and through a continuous wood made vocal by a thousand warbling songsters, we entered Oakdale Cemetery.  This is quite a beautiful Cemetery, embracing an area of some thirty acres laid out with taste and neatness.  A natural growth of oak and hickory trees, add greatly to its beauty, and the care with which many of the tombs are decorated, bear witness to the love borne towards the departed.

Leaving Oakdale for the northward, we entered one of nature’s most magnificent specimens of prairie, upon which is located Pine Hill.  Here we found the sexton, who welcomed us to the city of the tombs.  We found him not unlike the grave digger that Shakespeare gave to Hamlet – a philosopher.  Grave-diggers are all philosophers!  This philosopher informed me that Pine Hill embraced an area of 60 acres, with five miles of carriage road and eleven miles of walks.  This cemetery in time will vie with any in the west.  Art is furnishing the trees and shrubbery, and settling them down wherever taste and beauty require their presence.  The grounds are elevated, and susceptible of being rendered beautiful with little labor.

I will examine the stone records of mortality.  Here rests a man of years and experience, who tarried through many of the long years that make up the great past, and here will his mortal part mingle with the soil until the Almighty arm shall dash to pieces the structure of the earth.  And here’s an infant by its fond mother’s side.  The record speaks of a life of months.  Happy innocent! it did not long sip the cup of life.  And here the grim messenger of death has summoned to his tribunal a youth of sixteen.  Fair youth! hadst I been thy advocate, I would have plead thy tender years, and pointed to those who had outlived their allotted time.  And yonder rests, side by side, three of tender years.  Happy voyagers! no sooner launched than moored in Heaven; but you have escaped the barbed arrows of calumny, the finger of scorn, and the temptations of a sinful and dangerous world. – Highly favored probationers! were it not sinful, I would envy you your sweet and happy repose.  Sleep, angels, sleep, Heaven will guard and protect you.

We now depart for the City Cemetery – westward.  We pass a large and stately mansion, with its lawns, vineyards and well selected shrubbery, situated on the bluff.  It is not only grand, but magnificent, and does credit to its projector.  It is built on the Ionic order, and is, beyond question the most beautiful and perfect mansion within the county – and I claim to be a connoisseur in architecture, as well as in furbelows and flounces.  Our contraband driver informs me that this splendid mansion is owned by J. M. D. Burrows, Esq.

The City Cemetery I find to be a small enclosure of some five acres, located on the river’s bank.  Here discord reigns supreme; an unfinished and rickety stone wall graces the eastern ditch; uncared for shrubbery, sunken graves and shattered tombs.  It needs no ghost to arise from the dead to tell the visitor that this Cemetery is under the supervision of a soulless body.

We now visit Westphal & Co.’s flower garden and nursery, then homeward bound.  Here, at Westphal’s, can be found choice plants and shrubbery, both in the useful and ornamental department.  The gentlemanly proprietor showed me over his expansive flowery domain, and gave me valuable information in the art of cultivating shrubbery, and presented me with one of May’s richest and choicest pearls – a boquet of flowers.

Concluding I have seen sufficient for one afternoon, I retire to rest, bidding you and all the world good night.

STE. MARGUERITE’S HILL.

– Published in The Davenport Daily Gazette, Davenport, Iowa, Thursday Morning, May 22, 1862, p. 2