The Family Column.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 6, Issue 332, 14 December 1865, Page 1

The Family Column.

BURIED ALIYE : A TRUE STORY. [from once a week.] Happening to be spending the winter of the year 1850 at Gibraltar, I one day, in the course of my wanderings, fuand myself in the cemetery set apart there for the burial of strangers. Protestants and' the like, who were not members of the Romish communion. It was a bare and bleak spot enough, situated on very high ground, and there was not much in the surrounding details and picturesqueness of the graves, as sometimes is in foreign burial-places, to interest a sight-seers with one exception ;—lu the extreme eastern corner, and on the most elevated the initials M. L. on it, and the date of the person's death; a wreath of flowers encircled the stone, and the grave was evidently’very carefully tended and watched, presenting thereby a considerable contrast to those of the other strangers who had found their last restingplace on that bleak rock. °

So struck was I with the neatness of this individual grave, that seeing an old man woiking hard by, I asked him if there was any particular history attached to it, and if he knew who the person was that was buried there ; his answer did not, give me much information, beyond the fact of its being the grave of an English lady who had diecTthere some years before, and whose husband paid him (the old man) a small sum yearly for keeping that spot in order, and supplyiucf the cross with flowers. - °

This little incident had quite passed out of my mind as a matter too trival 10 be worth remembering till I was reminded of it in rather a startling manner a short tiin ls ago.

I was staying at a country house in Yorkshire, the host and hostess being both of them old and dear friends of mine, when late one evening the conversation happened to turn upon a subject sufficiently exciting to rouse the most sleepily inclined of the guests into wakefulness. It was debated whether instances had occurred of people having been buried alive, — i.e„ whether any authenticated case could be stated of a man who had fallen into a trance, had been in that condition buried, had afterwards come to life for a brief interval, and then had been suffocated in his coffin. Opinions were pretty equally divided on the subject; the one party affirming that it was impossible, in the, present statq -of medical science, for anybody to meeTwith such a horrible fate, and the other though apparently unable to cite any examples, declaring that they were sure such a thing might happen though they admitted at the same time that cases of that nature would be less likely to occur in England, where a reasonable time elapsed before burial • than PH the. Continent, where the laws enforced

the interment of the body so soon after death, la the midst of the discussion, the lady of house, who seemed to take but little interest in it one way or the other, suddenly surprised us all by saying that if we would give her our attention for a short time, she would tell us a story on that subject, and relate \vliat had truly occurred to a near relative .of her own, many years before. “ You may have often heard me mention,” she said turning to me, “ ray two cousins, Charles and Frank Livingston, though I don’t much think you have ever had a°personal acquantance with either of them. It is just twenty years ago now that they fell into love with two of the prettiest girls in Yorkshire, sisters and heiresses, whose names were Mary and Florence Arden. As the progress of their love affairs has not much to do with the gist of my story, it is enough for me to say everything went on very satisfactorily, and that in due course, and on the same day, Mary and Florence became the wives of my two cousins, Charles and Frank respectively. Mary was the eldest sister, though at the time of their marriage she was baiely nineteen, and to my mind the most taking and loveable of the two, of course, blank thought differently, and perhaps it was as w r ell he did so.

“ I need scarcely tell you that the happy couples passed their honeymoons very pleasantly in visiting various spots in England and Scotland, and afterwards settled do°wn a few miles from each other in close proximity to the city of York itself.

ihe marriages happened in the spring of the year, and the following autumn, much to tne delight of the two brides, it was determind that a yacht should be chartered for a few months, and the winter spent in cruising about from place to place; their ideas chiefly pointed towards the Mediterranean, as they all had a great desire to visit Malta and Gibialtai, and moreover, if possible, to laud in Atrica ; the latter I believe merely that they might have the satisfaction of saying that they had once been there. Gibraltar was to be the first place on the list, and accordingly, after experiencing a rather rough voyag.., which tested their capabilities as sailors to a considerable extent, they found themselves anchored oft that huge rock. They saw all that was to be seen in the shape of the fortifications, &c,, among other places that they were taken to visit was the bury-ing-gmund set apart for strangers who were not Roman Catholics. Mary Livingston, who had been, so they afterwards recollected, silent and apparently pre-occ«pied all that day, when she first caught sight of the cemetery started, and seemed surprised; after they had looked about them, and lamented the general untidiness that prevailed, she suddenly astonished them all by walking to one corner of the ground more elevated than the rest, where she stopped, and planting her foot on a certain spot, said that she was going to relate a curious dream she had had the previous night. “ She dreamt, she said, first that she was lyiog in the cabin of the yacht sick almost upm death; that her husband and sister, standing hy, seemed, by their actions and gestures, to imagine that she was dead, but, though she was all this time conscious of what was taking place, yet she was utterly unabie to move hand cr foot, or to make auy sound to attract their attention; in the second part of her dream she seemed to be carried on men’s shoulders, still perfectly conscious, along the road they had Just traversed, that she passed by their aid into cemetery, and that the men deposited their burden on that very spot where she tuen stood; a grave had been dug, apparently for her, she supposed, and° she was buried, so it seemed to her in her dream, alive, but motionless and powerless to help herself in any way. The horror of her situation, as she was beiug lowered into the earth seemed to give strength and in the act of striving to cry out she awoke ; what seemed so curious to her was that, though she had never seen the bariai-ground before, or the road that led to it, yet, when she came to visit them the day after her dream, the found that the reality was exactly like the dream.”

" Well bat,” I interrupted, “ you haven’t told as anything yet that,

Excuse me,” replied our hostess, “ but if you will do me the favor of waiting till I have finished my story; you will find you will have no reason to complain, nr husband ari( l her friends laughed at Mary for her evident belief in her dream, and ascribed the whole circumstance to indigestion ; they did not, however, stay much longer in the cemetery, but returned to the yacht.

. “ Two da J 7 s afterwards, and on the evening before that on which they had proposed leaving Gibraltar, Mary Livingston was suddenly taken ill; a doctor was at once sent for, who pronounced her attack to be a slight one of cholera, assuring her friends at the same time that they need not be under any apprehensions of danger. Next day, however, her symptoms changed for the worse, and so rapidly that before evening it was evident that she was sinking fast, and that no hopes could be retained of her recovery. She died during the night. Her iusband, as you may imagine, was overcome with grief,* but he had to stifle his feelings, and settle the things connected with her funeral, which was obliged to take place on the evening of the very day after she died, °

All, as 1 was tola afterwards happened according to that dream of hers; she was carried along that steep road, and her grave had been dug on the very spot where but a few days ago she had stood before them full of life and beauty; but strange to say, and almost incredible, neither her husband nor her sister remembered the circumstance of her dream ; and it was not till some six or seven months afterwards, that one evening in the twilight of their Yorkshire home, the memory of the stroll through the burial-ground and the event connected with it flashed across the mind of the widowed husband. Remorse at the thought of its being now all too late was bis first feeling and then an inexpressible desire seized him a longing to see if his darling’s dream had come true, and she had in reality been buried alhe. As fast as it was possible for him to do so, he hurried to Gibraltar, it was with some difficulty that he obtained permission to have the grave opened, and when lie had succeeded he fouud his worst fears had been realised ; there was no doubt left in his min'd that his wife had recovered consciousness alter she had been supposed by all to be dead, for the body was turned partly on one side, as if with the effort of trying to free itself from the icy grasp of the tomb. From the date of that discovery, he has never ceased to reproach himself fur being in some part the cause of her death; but he has never ceased to wonder how it was that the recollection of that dream of hers passed so quickly from his miud, and was not revived till so long afterwards.

Hei grave, he told me, is marked by a white cross of marble, with the initials M. L. on it, and the date of her death.”

The tale of our hostess was finished, and as she ended the memory of that grave with its wreath of flowers and the bleak graveyard came into ray mind and made the probability of the story more apparent to me. I have told the tale as it was told me; for myself I believe it to be true i for ray readers they must decide for themselves. The names, of course, have been altered, as, for aught I know to the contrary, some of the actors in that curious drama ai’e living still.