The Iola register. [volume] (Iola, Allen County, Kansas) 1875-1902, 1882-01-20

Quaint EpitaPAs.
OF epitaphs remarkable for their play
upon words good specimen was fur
nished by Benjamin Franklin:
The body Of BENJAMIN Franklin, printer,
like the cover Of IN old book, its contents torn
out and stripped q its lettering and gliding,
| lies here, food for worms; but the work shall
not be wholly lost-for 1t will, as he believed,
appear once more In new and more perfect
edition, corrected and amended by the author.
He was born January g. 1706; died =, IL.
A brother printer, under the impress
sion that 1.-THE art preservative OF arts
could furnish still better material out OF
which to compose an epitaph for one
who was SO skiKul craftsman, sug-
gested the following as an alternative in
scriptiOn:
Benjamin Franklin. the Of his profession,
the type of honesty, the Of all; and although
the rTs- of death has put q. to his existence,
each s of his life has been without
The following epitaph of watch
maker makes exhaustive use OF trade
phrases:
Here lies in horizontal position the outside
case Of George Routleigh, matchmaker, whose
abilities in that line were an honor to his pro-
fession; integrity was the handspring and
prudence the regulator of all the actions OF
his life; humane, generous and liberal; ms
hand never stopped until he had relieved dis
tress; so nicely regulated were all his move
ments that he never went wrong except when
set a-gOng by people who did not know his
KEY; even then he was easily set Alright again !;
he had the art of disposing Of his time SO well
that his hours glided away in one continual
round of pleasure and delight, till an unlucky
movement put period to his existence; he
departed his life November IA, 1902, aged 81,
wound up, in hopes of being taken in hand by
his Maker, and of being thoroughly cleaned,
repaired and set a-going in the world to come
Here is an epitaph of an earlier date
on a carpenter at Oakham, named John
Spong Job. 1856:
Who man; sturdy oak has laid along,
Felled by Deaths surer Ratchet, here lies
Spong,
Posts oft he made, yet meier place could get,
And lived by railing. though he was no wit;
Old saws he had, although no antiquarian,
And styles corrected, yet was no grammarian.
Long liv'd he Oakham's premier architect;
And, lasting as his fame. a tomb to erect
In vain we seek an artist such as he,
Whose pales and gules were for eternity.
So here he rests from all life's tolls and fol-
lies
Oh! spare, kind heaven, his fellow-lab-rer
Hollies.
The following from Berkeley church
yard on Thomas Pierce COB. 1850, re-
lates to sef-made man, who was skilled
in more than one branch of workman
ship, and who was not without honor in
his life from his fellow-townsmen:
Here lieth Thomas Pierce, whom no man
taught,
Yet he in Iron, Brass and Silver wrought,
He Jacks and Clocks and Watches with art)
made,
And mended too when Others work did fade.
OF Berkeley five times Mayor this artist was !;
And yet this Mayor, this artist, was but grasse.
When his own watch ran dOwne on the last
He that made watches had not male key
To wind it up, but useless it must lie
Until he ri e again no more to die.
The shoemaker's trade, with such
words as '.awl," ''sole'' and s.last'' to
play upon, has furnished some good cpl
taphs of this class; and the following
blacksmith's epitaph has been thought
SO appropriate that it may be found in
American and colonial as well as in En-
glish churchyards:
My ledge and Hammer lie reclined,
NV bellows, too, have lost their wind;
My Fires extinguished; Forge decayed;
And in the Dust my Vice is laid;
My Coal is spent; my Irons gone:
The last Nails driven, my work is done.
An example of this epitaph may be
found in Low Moor churchyard, on the
tombstone of Christopher Barlow (1824).
The earliest example is said to be found
in Lincoln churchyard, where it is in
scribed to the memory of David Fletcher,
smith to this church Job. 1741. A SIM
liar epitaph at St. Adams has the follow
ing additional lines, which are by no
means an improvement:
My freddy corpse lies here at rest,
Ny soul, smoke-like, ascending to be blest,
While another at Chipping Sodbury, in
Worcestershire, is put into the third per-
son and concludes:
His body here, clutched in the dust,
'Tis hoped his soul is with the just.
There is curious epitaphial blunder
on tombstone at Monknewton, near
Drogheda, erected by one Patrick Kelly,
''in memory of his posterityr' There is
an epitaph at St. Andrews, Plymouth.
on ''the only surviving son. of Admiral
Vernon. The following is from Llany-
mynech church-yard, Interchangeable:
Here lies John Thomas
And his children dear;
Two buried at Oswestry,
An one here.
More ludicrous than any of these is sae
inscription on stone at Keel, in Mont
gomeryshire:
Here lie the remains Of Thomas Nicols, who
died in Philadelphia, March, 1883. Had he
lived he would have been buried here.
/. A companion blunder to that at Monk
newton is found in the church-yard at
Montrose, where lie the bodies of George
Young and Isabel Guthrie, "and all their
posterity for more than fifty years back
warkr'-NeU York Home Journal.
Lighthouse TerrOrs.
If those on shore are awed by the ter
rible violence of the winds and waves
during tempest what must be the ex-
periences of men who live in a buildin0