Chapter IV
April’s Lady
Kingsport is a quaint old town, hearking back to early Colonial days, and
wrapped in its ancient atmosphere, as some fine old dame in garments fashioned
like those of her youth. Here and there it sprouts out into modernity, but at heart
it is still unspoiled; it is full of curious relics, and haloed by the romance of
many legends of the past. Once it was a mere frontier station on the fringe of the
wilderness, and those were the days when Indians kept life from being
monotonous to the settlers. Then it grew to be a bone of contention between the
British and the French, being occupied now by the one and now by the other,
emerging from each occupation with some fresh scar of battling nations branded
on it.
It has in its park a martello tower, autographed all over by tourists, a
dismantled old French fort on the hills beyond the town, and several antiquated
cannon in its public squares. It has other historic spots also, which may be
hunted out by the curious, and none is more quaint and delightful than Old St.
John’s Cemetery at the very core of the town, with streets of quiet, old-time
houses on two sides, and busy, bustling, modern thoroughfares on the others.
Every citizen of Kingsport feels a thrill of possessive pride in Old St. John’s, for,
if he be of any pretensions at all, he has an ancestor buried there, with a queer,
crooked slab at his head, or else sprawling protectively over the grave, on which
all the main facts of his history are recorded. For the most part no great art or
skill was lavished on those old tombstones. The larger number are of roughly
chiselled brown or gray native stone, and only in a few cases is there any attempt
at ornamentation. Some are adorned with skull and cross-bones, and this grizzly
decoration is frequently coupled with a cherub’s head. Many are prostrate and in
ruins. Into almost all Time’s tooth has been gnawing, until some inscriptions
have been completely effaced, and others can only be deciphered with difficulty.
The graveyard is very full and very bowery, for it is surrounded and intersected
by rows of elms and willows, beneath whose shade the sleepers must lie very
dreamlessly, forever crooned to by the winds and leaves over them, and quite
undisturbed by the clamor of traffic just beyond.