(continued)

A comely woman, with a pretty rose-bud of a daughter, came to select a grave-stone for a twin-daughter, who had died a month before.  I was impressed with the different nature of their feelings for the dead; the mother was calm and woefully resigned, fully conscious of her loss, as of a treasure which she had not always possessed, and therefore had been aware that it might be taken from her; but the daughter evidently had no real knowledge of what death's doings were.  Her thoughts knew, but not her heart.  It seemed to me, that by the print and pressure which the dead sister had left upon the survivor's spirit, her feelings were almost the same as if she still stood side by side, and arm in arm, with the departed, looking at the slabs of marble; and once or twice she glanced around with a sunny smile, which, as its sister-smile had faded forever, soon grew confusedly overshadowed.  Perchance her consciousness was truer than her reflection—perchance her dead sister was a closer companion than in life.  The mother and daughter talked a long while with Mr. Wigglesworth about a suitable epitaph, and finally chose an ordinary verse of ill-matched rhymes, which had already been inscribed upon innumerable tomb-stones.  But, when we ridicule the triteness of monumental verses, we forget that Sorrow reads far deeper in them than we can, and finds a profound and individual purport in what seems so vague and inexpressive, unless interpreted by her.  She makes the epitaph anew, though the selfsame words may have served for a thousand graves.

`And yet,' said I afterwards to Mr. Wigglesworth, `they might have made a better choice than this.  While you were discussing the subject, I was struck by at least a dozen simple and natural expressions from the lips of both mother and daughter.  One of these would have formed an inscription equally original and appropriate.'

`No, no,' replied the sculptor, shaking his head, `there is a good deal of comfort to be gathered from these little old scraps of poetry; and so I always recommend them in preference to any new-fangled ones.  And somehow, they seem to stretch to suit a great grief, and shrink to fit a small one.'

It was not seldom that ludicrous images were excited by what took place between Mr. Wigglesworth and his customers.  A shrewd gentlewoman, who kept a tavern in the town, was anxious to obtain two or three grave-stones for the deceased members of her family, and to pay for these solemn commodities by taking the sculptor to board.  Hereupon a fantasy arose in my mind, of good Mr. Wigglesworth sitting down to dinner at a broad, flat tomb-stone, carving one of his own plump little marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of crossbones, and drinking out of a hollow death's-head, or perhaps a lacrymatory vase, or sepulchral urn; while his hostess's dead children waited on him at the ghastly banquet.  On communicating this nonsensical picture to the old man, he laughed heartily, and pronounced my humor to be of the right sort.

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