Part 9 (1/2)

Then come you to some strangely odd, as for instance:

”Here lies John Auricular, Who in the ways of the Lord walked perpendicular”

Again:

”Many a cold wind o'er my body shall roll While in Abraham's bosom I'm feasting my soul”

appropriate certainly, as the grave was on a cold northeast slope of one of our bleak hills. Again, a Dutchman's epitaph for his twin babes:

”Here lies two babes, dead as two nits, Who shook to death mit ague fits.

They was too good to live mit me.

So G.o.d He took 'em to live mit He.”

There is the grave of a young man who, dying suddenly, was eulogized with this strange aim at the sublime:

”He lived, He died!”

Not a hundred miles from Boston is a gravestone the epitaph upon which, to all who knew the parties, borders strongly upon the burlesque. A widower who within a few months buried his wife and adopted daughter, the former of whom was all her life long a thorn in his flesh, and whose death could not but have been a relief, wrote thus: ”They were lovely and beloved in their lives, and in death were not divided.” Poor man! Well _he_ knew how full of strife and sorrow an evil woman can make life! He was worn to a shadow before her death, and his hair was all gone. Many of the neighbors thought surely that _he_ well knew what had become of it, especially as it disappeared by the handful. But the grave covers all faults; and those who knew her could only hope that she might rest from her labors and her works follow her!

On a low, sandy mound far down on the Cape rises a tall slate stone, with fitting emblems and epitaphs as follows:

”Here lies Judy and John That lovely pair, John was killed by a whale, And Judy sleeps here.”

--Sketches of New England.

Danforth Marble

THE HOOSIER AND THE SALT-PILE

”I'm sorry,” says Dan, as he knocked the ashes from his regalia, as he sat in a small crowd over a gla.s.s of sherry at Florence's, New York, one evening. ”I'm sorry that the stages are disappearing so rapidly; I never enjoyed traveling so well as in the slow coaches.

I've made a good many pa.s.sages over the Alleghanies, and across Ohio, from Cleveland to Columbus and Cincinnati, all over the South, down East, and up North, in stages, and I generally had a good time.

”When I pa.s.sed over from Cleveland to Cincinnati, the last time, in a stage, I met a queer crowd--such a _corps_, such a time you never did see; I never was better amused in my life. We had a good team-- spanking horses, fine coaches, and one of them _drivers_ you read of.

Well, there was nine 'insiders,' and I don't believe there ever was a stageful of Christians ever started before so chuck full of music.

”There was a beautiful young lady going to one of the Cincinnati academies; next to her sat a Jew peddler--for Cowes and a market; wedging him in was a dandy blackleg, with jewelry and chains around his breast and neck--enough to hang him. There was myself and an old gentleman with large spectacles, gold-headed cane, and a jolly, soldiering-iron-looking nose; by him was a circus rider whose breath was enough to breed yaller fever and could be felt just as easy as cotton velvet! A cross old woman came next, and whose _look_ would have given any reasonable man the double-breasted blues before breakfast; alongside of her was a rale backwoods preacher, with the biggest and ugliest mouth ever got up since the flood. He was flanked by the low comedian of the party, an Indiana Hoosier, 'gwine down to Orleans to get an army contract' to supply the forces then in Mexico with beef.

”We rolled along for some time; n.o.body seemed inclined to 'open.' The old aunty sot bolt upright, looking crab-apples and persimmons at the Hoosier and the preacher; the young lady dropped the green curtain of her bonnet over her pretty face, and leaned back in her seat, to nod and dream over j.a.ponicas and jumbles, pantalettes and poetry; the old gentleman, proprietor of the Bardolph 'nose,' looked out at the 'corduroy' and swashes; the gambler fell off into a doze, and the circus covey followed suit, leaving the preacher and me _vis-a-vis_ and saying nothing to n.o.body. 'Indiany,' he stuck his mug out at the window and criticized the cattle we now and then pa.s.sed. I was wis.h.i.+ng somebody would give the conversation a start, when 'Indiany'

made a break:

”'This ain't no great stock country,' says he to the old gentleman with the cane.

”'No, sir,' was the reply. 'There's very little grazing here; the range is nearly wore out.'

”Then there was nothing said again for some time. Bimeby the Hoosier opened again:

”'It's the d----est place for 'simmon trees and turkey buzzards I ever did see!'