75 Washington Irving.
keeping with the sad occasion. ' It was one of his own days,' was the remark of many present. . . . As he was laid down to take his last sleep, among the scenes he had loved and pictured, and by the side of his mother, as he had himself desired, the sun was declining, and soon another gorgeous sunset, such as brightened his last
evening in life, lighted up the western sky. It was a glorious scene ; and few of the sad-hearted mourners who had stood around the grave failed to associate that day's decline with the close of that pure and
beautiful life."
His grave is in the Sleepy Hollow cemetery of the old Dutch Church, in the very midst of the quiet, pastoral scenes to which his pen had given a world-wide reputation. Elaborate and costly monuments arise on every hand, but the one grave in the cemetery that is
rarely without flowers from early spring until the landscape is covered by the white shroud of winter, is marked by a plain slab of marble on
which is the simple inscription, "Washington Irving."
