Debts of Honor | Page 8

once I sat down, the little round building had always been in my mind.
I had always loved it, always feared to be near it; I had so longed to
know what might be within it. As a little knickerbockered child I would
pick the colored gravel-stones from the mortar, and play with them in
the dust; and if perchance one stone struck the iron door, I would run
away from the echo the blow produced.
In my older days it was again only around this building that I would
mostly play, and would remark that upon its façade were written great
letters, on which the ivy, that so actively clambered up the walls,
scarcely grew. At that time how I longed to know what those letters

could mean!
When the first holiday after I had made the acquaintance of those
letters came, and they took me again to our country-seat, one after
another I spelled out the ancient letters of the inscription on that
mysterious little house, and pieced them together in my mind. But I
could not arrive at their meaning; for they were written in some foreign
tongue.
Many, many times I wrote those words in the dust even before I
understood them:
"NE NOS INDUCAS IN TENTATIONEM."
I strove to reach one year earlier than my school-fellows the so-called
"student class," where Latin was taught.
My most elementary acquaintance with the Latin tongue had always for
its one aim the discovery of the meaning of that saying. Finally I solved
the mystery--
"Lead us not into temptation." It is a sentence of the Lord's Prayer,
which I myself had repeated a thousand times; and now I knew its
meaning still less than before.
And still more began to come to me a kind of mysterious abhorrence of
that building, above whose door was to be found the prayer that God
might guard us against temptations.
Perhaps this was the very dwelling of temptations?
We know what children understand by "temptations."
To-day I saw this door open, and knew that this building was our
family vault.
This door, which hitherto I had only seen covered with ivy, was now
swung open, and through the open porch glittered the light of a lamp.
The two great Virginia creepers which were planted before the crypt

hid the glass so that it was not visible from the garden. The brightness
was only for us.
The four men set the coffin down on the steps; we followed after it.
So this was that house where temptations dwell; and all our prayers
were in vain; "lead us not into temptation." Yet to temptation we were
forced to come. Down a few steps we descended, under a low, plastered
arch, which glittered green from the moisture of the earth. In the wall
were built deep niches, four on either side, and six of them were
already filled. Before them stood slabs of marble, with inscriptions
telling of those who had fallen asleep. The four servants placed the
coffin they had brought on their shoulders in the seventh niche; then the
aged retainer clasped his hands, and with simple devotion repeated the
Lord's Prayer; the other three men softly murmured after him: "Amen.
Amen."
Then they left us to ourselves.
Grandmother all this while had without a word, without a movement,
stood in the depth of the crypt, holding our hands within her own; but
when we were alone, in a frenzy she darted to the coffined niche and
flung herself to the ground before it.
Oh! I cannot tell what she said as she raved there. She wept and sobbed,
flinging reproaches--at the dead! She scolded, as one reproves a child
that has cut itself with a knife. She asked why he did this. And again
she heaped grave calumny upon him, called him coward, wretch,
threatened him with God, with God's wrath, and with eternal
damnation;--then asked pardon of him, babbled out words of
conciliation, called him back, called him dear, sweet, and good; related
to him what a faithful, dear, loving wife waited at home, with his two
sweet children,--how could he forget them? Then with gracious,
reverent words begged him to turn Christian, to come to God, to learn
to believe, to hope, to love; to trust to the boundless mercy; to take his
rest in the paths of Heaven. And then she uttered a scream, tore the
tresses of her dove-white hair, and cursed God. Methought it was the
night of the Last Judgment.

Every fire-breathing monster of the Revelation, the very disgorging of
the dead from the rent earth, were as naught to me compared with the
terror which that hour heaped upon my head.
'Twas hither we had brought father, who died suddenly, in the prime of
life. Hither we