Nathaniel Hawthorne died on this day in 1864. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow graduated from Bowdoin College with Hawthorne, and was a life-long friend; he describes the funeral day at Sleepy Hollow Cemetery, Concord — "white with apple-blooms," the dappled sunlight "shot through with golden thread."
The funeral of Emily Dickinson, held on this day in 1886, was held according to her wishes: a simple dress of white flannel, a white casket, only a few of her closest friends and family attending the home service, a bier of pine boughs and sand violets, the procession going out the back door and crossing the lawn "full of buttercups and violet & wild geraniums" (Thomas Wentworth Higginson's diary). As Longfellow's poem about Hawthorne noted apple blossom, so the memoirs of those present note the strong smell of apple on Dickinson’s funeral day. (from Today in Literature)
Apples, apples...Violets and pine boughs...a white flannel dress, a white casket ---the lawn full of flowers...
The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery--what a name...
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