But still the good old sculptor murmured , and stumbled , as it were , over the gravestones amid which he had walked through life . Whether he were right or wrong , I had grown the wiser from our companionship and from my observations of nature and character as displayed by those who came , with their old griefs or their new ones , to get them recorded upon his slabs of marble . And yet with my gain of wisdom I had likewise gained perplexity ; for there was a strange doubt in my mind whether the dark shadowing of this life , the sorrows and regrets , have not as much real comfort in them -- leaving religious influences out of the question -- as what we term life 's joys . THE SHAKER BRIDAL . One day , in the sick-chamber of Father Ephraim , who had been forty years the presiding elder over the Shaker settlement at Goshen , there was an assemblage of several of the chief men of the sect . Individuals had come from the rich establishment at Lebanon , from Canterbury , Harvard and Alfred , and from all the other localities where this strange people have fertilized the rugged hills of New England by their systematic industry . An elder was likewise there who had made a pilgrimage of a thousand miles from a village of the faithful in Kentucky to visit his spiritual kindred the children of the sainted Mother Ann . He had partaken of the homely abundance of their tables , had quaffed the far-famed Shaker cider , and had joined in the sacred dance every step of which is believed to alienate the enthusiast from earth and bear him onward to heavenly purity and bliss . His brethren of the North had now courteously invited him to be present on an occasion when the concurrence of every eminent member of their community was peculiarly desirable . The venerable Father Ephraim sat in his easy-chair , not only hoary-headed and infirm with age , but worn down by a lingering disease which it was evident would very soon transfer his patriarchal staff to other hands . At his footstool stood a man and woman , both clad in the Shaker garb . `` My brethren , '' said Father Ephraim to the surrounding elders , feebly exerting himself to utter these few words , `` here are the son and daughter to whom I would commit the trust of which Providence is about to lighten my weary shoulders . Read their faces , I pray you , and say whether the inward movement of the spirit hath guided my choice aright . '' Accordingly , each elder looked at the two candidates with a most scrutinizing gaze . The man -- whose name was Adam Colburn -- had a face sunburnt with labor in the fields , yet intelligent , thoughtful and traced with cares enough for a whole lifetime , though he had barely reached middle age . There was something severe in his aspect and a rigidity throughout his person -- characteristics that caused him generally to be taken for a schoolmaster ; which vocation , in fact , he had formerly exercised for several years . The woman , Martha Pierson , was somewhat above thirty , thin and pale , as a Shaker sister almost invariably is , and not entirely free from that corpse-like appearance which the garb of the sisterhood is so well calculated to impart . `` This pair are still in the summer of their years , '' observed the elder from Harvard , a shrewd old man . `` I would like better to see the hoar-frost of autumn on their heads . Methinks , also , they will be exposed to peculiar temptations on account of the carnal desires which have heretofore subsisted between them . ''
`` Nay , brother , '' said the elder from Canterbury ; `` the XXXXX and the black frost hath done its work on Brother Adam and Sister Martha , even as we sometimes discern its traces in our cornfields while they are yet green .
Alfred Canterbury Colburn Ephraim Goshen Harvard disease hoar-frost slabs years