The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1873-12-24
Curious EpitaphS.


Curious EpitaphS.
Among the most remarkable of human
idiosyncrasies is the taste for quaint and gro
tesque inscriptions upon tombstones. Almost
every churchyard has its specimen, many
which have become very familiar through the
newspapers. So prevalent is this oddly that
book has been published, filled with sreci
mems Of this CHASTITY literature, from which
we make the following extracts:
In All Saints Churchyard, Newcastle:
''Here lies Robert Wallace,
Clerk of ALI Hallows,
KING of good fellows
And maker of bellows.
He bellows did make till the day of his death,
But he that made bellows could never make breath"
A tombstone in Iowa (Burlington), has
this stanza:
Beneath this stone our baby lays Effg
He neither cries nor hoers;
He lived just one and twenty days
And cost us forty dollars
A resigned husband placed on the tomb
stone of his wife, with whom he had not
lived happily, the following: s
ssHere lies my wife; what better could she do
For her repose, and for her husbands, too"
On a tombstone in this city, over the body
of child, is this couplet:
ssThe little hero that lies here
Was conquered by the darrhga.'
In Highgate cemetery, London:
"Life's like Winters Day;
Some only Breakfast and away;
Others to Dinner stay, and are full fed
The oldest one but Sups and goes to Bed;
Wretched is he that fingers out the day
He that goes soonest has the least to pay"
As an Illustration of the exigencies of
rhyme an English writer cites the following
epitaph from tombstone at Manchester:
Here lies, alas! more's the pity,
All that remains of Mich olas Newcity
N B. His name was Newtown."
Over the remains Of one Thomas Wood
cock are these lines:l
The most amiable of husbands and excellent of men,
n. B. His real name was Woodcock, but it
wouldn't come in rhyme.-HiS Widow."
A Mrs. Hannah Jones piously raised a tab
let to the memory of her departed husband,
who had been a hosier. The inscription.
after recounting the many virtues of the de-
ceased, closes with the following couplet:
sHe left his hose, his Hannah, and his love.
TO go and sing hosannah In the realms above"
At Saragossa, Spain, is the following:
Here lies John Quebeeca, precertor to MY Lord,
the King. When he is admitted to the choir of an
GELS whose society he will embellish ADD where he
will distinguish himself by his powers of song God
shall say to the angels Cease We calves! and let me
hear John Qutbecca, precentor of MY Lord, the
King' EAH8
At Oldtown, Maine, over the body of
Orono, chief OF the Penobscots, who died at
the age of 113, in 1901, a tombstone bears
the following:
"Safe lodged within his blanket here below.
Lie the last relics of old ORoNO;
Il Worn down with toll ana care he in trice
Exchanged his wigwam for paradise"
At Northampton England, tombstone
has this stanza:
"Here lies the corpse of Susan Lee,
Who died of heartfelt pain,
Because she loved faithless he
Who loved her not again.
In the churchyard at Childwald, England,
is this stanza:
''Hsre lies the body of John Smith,
Buried in the cloiSters;
If he don't jum,n. at the last trump,
Call .0ysters!'"
One Sternhold Cakes offered prize for the
best epitaph to be placed on his tombstone
Several were offered, but all rejected on the
ground that they fattered him too much,
and he finally wrote this couplet himself:e
II mHere lies the body Of sternhod Cakes,
Who lived and died like other folks
The following is from tombstone in Sara
toga, N. Y.
.sHere lies the wife of Robert REGULAR, -
Who walked the way of Goa perpendicular"
In Lyford churchyard, near Dartmoor:
H ,r9 lies "a horizontal position,
the outside Case Of
GEORGE RoUTLEIGH. Matchmaker:
Integrity was the MainSprino and prudence the
Regulator,
of all the actions of his lfe
Humane, generous and liberal,
his hand never stopped.
- till he had relieved distress "a
So nicely regulated were all his Motions, TsTN
that he never went wrong,
except when set a-going
by people
who did not know his Key:
Even then he easily
set right again. ~
He had the art Of disposing his time 50 well,
that his Hours kept running on
in continual round of pleasure
till an unhappy Minute put stop to
his existence.
He departed this life Nov. ia, 1902, set. 81,
in hopes Of being being taken in hand
by his Maker;
and of being thoroughly Cleaned, Repaired,
Wound up and Set a-going
IN the world tocome.'
DR.. A., physician at Newcastle, being sum-
moned to vsstry, in order to reprimand the
sexton for drunkenness, he dwet so long or
the sections misconduct, as to draw from him
this expression: ''Sir, / thought you would
have been the Eastman alive to appear against
me, as have covered so many blunden Of
yoursp'.