{
  "schema": "tga.work.v1",
  "identifier": "dresden:vol-12:at-a-childs-grave",
  "slug": "at-a-childs-grave",
  "title": "At a Child's Grave",
  "subtitle": "Washington, D.C., January 8, 1882.",
  "excerpt": "Ingersoll's short grave-side address for a dead child — one of the most widely reprinted pieces of American funeral oratory.",
  "year": 1882,
  "volume": 12,
  "category": "Tribute",
  "author": {
    "name": "Robert G. Ingersoll",
    "wikidata": "Q360326",
    "viaf": "44331023"
  },
  "isPartOf": {
    "title": "The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll",
    "edition": "Dresden Edition",
    "publisher": "C. P. Farrell",
    "year": 1900
  },
  "license": "https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/",
  "url": "https://thegreatagnostic.com/works/at-a-childs-grave/",
  "wordCount": 504,
  "body": "Washington, D. C., January 8, 1882.\n\nMY FRIENDS: I know how vain it is to gild a grief with words, and yet I\nwish to take from every grave its fear. Here in this world, where life\nand death are equal kings, all should be brave enough to meet what all\nthe dead have met. The future has been filled with fear, stained and\npolluted by the heartless past. From the wondrous tree of life the buds\nand blossoms fall with ripened fruit, and in the common bed of earth,\npatriarchs and babes sleep side by side.\n\nWhy should we fear that which will come to all that is? We cannot tell,\nwe do not know, which is the greater blessing—life or death. We cannot\nsay that death is not a good. We do not know whether the grave is the\nend of this life, or the door of another, or whether the night here\nis not somewhere else a dawn. Neither can we tell which is the more\nfortunate—the child dying in its mother's arms, before its lips have\nlearned to form a word, or he who journeys all the length of life's\nuneven road, painfully taking the last slow steps with staff and crutch.\n\nEvery cradle asks us \"Whence?\" and every coffin \"Whither?\" The poor\nbarbarian, weeping above his dead, can answer these questions just\nas well as the robed priest of the most authentic creed. The tearful\nignorance of the one, is as consoling as the learned and unmeaning words\nof the other. No man, standing where the horizon of a life has touched a\ngrave, has any right to prophesy a future filled with pain and tears.\n\nMay be that death gives all there is of worth to life. If those we press\nand strain within our arms could never die, perhaps that love would\nwither from the earth. May be this common fate treads from out the paths\nbetween our hearts the weeds of selfishness and hate. And I had rather\nlive and love where death is king, than have eternal life where love is\nnot. Another life is nought, unless we know and love again the ones who\nlove us here.\n\nThey who stand with breaking hearts around this little grave, need have\nno fear. The larger and the nobler faith in all that is, and is to be,\ntells us that death, even at its worst, is only perfect rest. We know\nthat through the common wants of life—the needs and duties of each\nhour—their grief will lessen day by day, until at last this grave will\nbe to them a place of rest and peace—almost of joy. There is for them\nthis consolation: The dead do not suffer. If they live again, their\nlives will surely be as good as ours. We have no fear. We are all\nchildren of the same mother, and the same fate awaits us all. We, too,\nhave our religion, and it is this: Help for the living—Hope for the\ndead.\n"
}