Charles James Cannon

"Death hallows what it touches. This is a truth to which every heart, not utterly divested of the better feelings of our nature, will yield a ready assent; and he who violates the sanctuary of the grave is looked upon by all who acknowledge this truth as little less sacrilegious than the wretch who profanes the temple of his God. If such is the general feeling towards him who disturbs the sleep of the common dead—of beings unloved in life—and bound to him by no dearer tie than that of mere humanity; how lively must be the indignation, how deep the abhorrence and how bitter the denunciations against him who stands forth the accuser of his earliest, dearest friend: the revealer of follies and of crimes which—though they draw tears of blood from him in secret—should be hidden, as the miser hides his treasure, from the knowledge of the world, and who brands with eternal infamy that name which above all names has the power of reviving in his heart the buried recollections of his infant years! And that wretched being am I! But the task which I have assumed—though Heaven knows how unwillingly!—however it may wring my heart, I dare not shrink from the performance of."