Greenbrier independent. [volume] (Lewisburg, Va. [W. Va.]) 1859-1980, 1895-10-17
Grave Yard Literature.

We have from time to time called
attention to the practice of people
writing silly verses over the death of
some of their friends. 1t seems
likely that until the end of time peo-
pie Will write:
Little Willie, thou hast left us,
AND thy loss we deeply mourn, &c.
and sign it (" BY His Mother,n or of
some other relation. 1t is one of the
queer things of life why it is that
people, otherwise perfectly sane, will
send "slop" poetry to the press to
serve no other purpose than to make
ridiculous the subject of the death of
their friends. Equally absurd is
much of the stuff that is engrayen
on the marble set up over the head
or the dead in the cemeteries. In
the old grave yards Of Virginia and
Maryland many curious things have
been found, but of which few notes
have ever been kept.
In the cemetery near Lakewood,
N. j., the winter resort of the Cleve-
lands and the Goulds and tho Van
derbilts, may be found these sugges-
tive lines:
My painful sore long time l bore
physicians were in vain;
I'LL God was pleased to give me rest
And free me from my pain.
Farewell my husband and children dear.
l am not dead, but sleeping here.
AS am now soon you must be.
Prepare for death and follow me.
Another inscription is never quoted
in grammars
Him shall never come back to me
But us shall surely go to he.
A stone, erected by his wife, is
rather doubtfully inscribed:
He left this world of care and strife.
10 lead above happier life.
A loving husband" of the same
neighborhood had craven this enip-
matical memorial over the grave of
his wife:
The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken
away;
Blessed be the name of the Lold.
A descriptive bit of verse may be
found In the same cemetery:
Her blooming cheeks were no defense
Against the scarlet fever;
In five days time she was cut down
10 be with Christ forever.
An oddity is the subjoined senti-
ment carved on the tombstone of a
San Franciscan:
Blessed are the homesick,
For they shall get home.
San Diego, CAL, furnishes a re-
mlnder OF the wild and illiterate @
days of the West:
Ihis year is saked to the memory of
William Penay Shraken, who cam tObis
deth being shot with Colts revolver
one OF the old kind, brass mounted, and
OF such is the Kingdom of Heaven.
This elusive stanza may be found
at Hillsdale, N. ":
Sleep on, sleep on. my love,
sleep on my love, for you are my turtle
dove,
My dear wife and children, don't you
mourn for me.
Heaven is my throne and the earth is my
footstool.
In the Pittsfield, Mass, city of the
dead Is this:
And this informs you where | lie.
Remember you ere long must have
Like me mansion in the grave.
Also three infants, two sons and n
daughter.
Another is brief and to the point ::
Here lies
Elizabeth Wise.
She died of thunder sent from heaven
In 1777.
This inscription in the La Pointe,
Mich, cemetery does not speak we'll
for the so-called esteem" Of the
dead mans relatives:
This stone was erected to the memory
OF j. D. who was shot as mark of
esteem by his surviving relatives.
A tombstone as a matrimonial
agency Is certainly novel. A village
cemetery on the coast of Maine thus
advertises the wants ola willy widow:
Sacred to the memory of James H.
Random, who died Aug. 9th, 1900. His
WIDOW, VINO mourns as one who can be
comrorted, aged only "a, and possessing
every qualification for agood wife, lives
in this village.
In a cemetery i'm this State know
OF grave where lies the body of a
man who was noted for being one of
the toughest characters of the neigh
borhood, and he was killed i'm fight
In bar-room, yet over his tomb is
this inscription:
Blessed are the dead that die in the
Lord.
Another story of Western life
comes to us Of the grave Of cow
boy In Western State. Theepitaph
reads:
He did his damnest-
Angels could do no more.
WERE II not for their natural ene-
mics, the Goldfish, 1t is said, would
fill all the available space in the seas,