from Twice Told Tales

by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Passing summer, several years since, at Edgartown, island of Martha's Vineyard, I became acquainted with certain carver of tombstones, who had travelled and voyaged thither interior of Massachusetts, in search of professional employment The speculation had turned out so successful, that my friend expected to transmute slate and marble into silver and gold, amount of thousand dollars, during the sojourn at Nantucket Vineyard The secluded life, simple and primitive spirit which still characterizes the inhabitants islands, especially of Martha's Vineyard, insure their dead friends longer and dearer remembrance daily novelty and revolving bustle world can elsewhere afford to beings past Yet while every family is anxious to erect memorial to its departed members, the untainted breath of ocean bestows such health and length of days people isles, as would cause melancholy dearth of business to resident artist line His own monument, recording his disease by starvation, would probably be an early specimen skill Gravestones, therefore, have generally been an article of imported merchandise

In my walks burial-ground of Edgartown,--where the dead have lain soil, once enriched by their decay, has returned to its original barrenness,-- ancient burial-ground I noticed much variety of monumental sculpture The elder stones, dated century back, or more, have borders elaborately carved with flowers, adorned with multiplicity of death's-heads, cross-bones, scythes, hour-glasses, and other lugubrious emblems of mortality, with here and there winged cherub to direct the mourner's spirit upward These productions of Gothic taste must quite beyond the colonial skill day, and were probably carved in London, and brought across the ocean to commemorate the defunct worthies lonely isle The more recent monuments are mere slabs of slate, ordinary style, without any superfluous flourishes to set off the bald inscriptions But others--and those far the most impressive, both to my taste and feelings--were roughly hewn gray rocks island, evidently unskilled hands of surviving friends and relatives On some there were merely the initials of name; some were inscribed with misspelt prose or rhyme, in deep letters, which the moss and wintry rain of many years able to obliterate These, these were graves where loved ones slept ! an old theme of satire, the falsehood and vanity of monumental eulogies; but when affection and sorrow grave the letters with their own painful labor, then we copy record on their hearts

My acquaintance, the sculptor,-- share that title with Greenough, dauber of signs is painter as Raphael, --had found ready market for all his blank slabs of marble, and full occupation in lettering and ornamenting them an elderly man, descendant old Puritan family of Wigglesworth, with certain simplicity and singleness, both of heart and mind, which, methinks, is more rarely-found among us Yankees than in community of people gray head and wrinkled brow, quite like child in all matters save what had some reference own business; , unless my fancy misled me, to view mankind in no other relation than as people in want of tombstones; literary attainments evidently comprehended very little, either of prose or poetry, which , at or other, been inscribed on slate or marble His sole task and office immortal pilgrims tomb--the duty Providence had sent the old man world, as it were with chisel hand--was to label the dead bodies, lest their names forgotten resurrection Yet he failed, within narrow scope, to gather few sprigs of earthly, and more than earthly, wisdom,--the harvest of many grave

And lugubrious as his calling might appear, as cheerful an old soul as health, and integrity, and lack of care, could make him, and used to set to work upon one sorrowful inscription or another sort of spirit which impels man to sing at his labor whole, Mr Wigglesworth an entertaining, and often instructive, an interesting character; and partly charm society, and still more because his work has an invariable attraction for "man born of woman," accustomed some hours day at his workshop The quaintness remarks, and their not infrequent truth,--a truth condensed and pointed limited sphere view,--gave raciness talk, which mere worldliness and general cultivation would at once have destroyed

Sometimes discuss the respective merits various qualities of marble, numerous slabs were resting against the walls shop; or sometimes an hour or two would pass quietly, without word on either side, while I watched how neatly his chisel struck out letter after letter names Nortons, the Mayhews, the Luces, the Daggets, and other immemorial families Vineyard Often, with an artist's pride, the good old sculptor would speak of favorite productions skill, which were scattered village graveyards of New England But my chief and most instructive amusement was to witness his interviews customers, who held interminable consultations form and fashion desired monuments, the buried excellence commemorated, the anguish expressed, and finally, the lowest price in dollars and cents marble transcript feelings obtained Really, my mind received many fresh ideas, which, perhaps, may remain even longer than Mr Wigglesworth's hardest marble will retain the deepest strokes chisel

An elderly lady came to bespeak monument for her first love, who killed by whale Pacific Ocean no forty years before singular that so strong an impression of early feeling survived changes of her subsequent life, course she wife and mother, and, as judge, comfortable and happy woman Reflecting within myself, it appeared lifelong sorrow--as, in all good faith, she deemed it--was fortunate circumstances of her history It had given an ideality to her mind; it had kept her purer and less earthly than otherwise , by drawing portion of her sympathies apart from earth Amid the throng of enjoyments, pressure of worldly care, and all the warm materialism life, she had communed with vision, and the better for such intercourse Faithful husband of her maturity, and loving him with far more real affection than she ever felt dream of her girlhood, there had still been an imaginative faith ocean-buried, an ordinary character had thus been elevated and refined Her sighs the breath of Heaven to her soul The good lady earnestly desired proposed monument ornamented with carved border of marine plants, intertwined with twisted sea-shells, such as were probably waving over her lover's skeleton, or strewn around it, far depths Pacific But Mr Wigglesworth's chisel being inadequate task, she was forced to content herself with rose, hanging its head from broken stem After her departure, I remarked symbol was most apt

"And yet," said my friend the sculptor, embodying image the thoughts that passing through my own mind, "that broken rose has shed its sweet smell through forty years good woman's life "

seldom that find such pleasant food for contemplation as above instance None off the applicants, , affected me more disagreeably than an old man who came, fourth wife hanging arm, to bespeak gravestones three former occupants marriage-bed I watched with some anxiety whether his remembrance of either were more affectionate than other two, but could discover no symptom kind The three monuments were all same material and form, and each decorated, in bas-relief, with two weeping-willows, sympathetic trees bending over its fellow, broken midst and rest upon sepulchral urn This, indeed, was Mr Wigglesworth's standing emblem of conjugal bereavement I shuddered gray polygamist, who had so utterly lost the holy sense of individuality in wedlock, that methought fain to reckon upon his fingers women, who had once slept by his side, were now sleeping in their graves even--if I wrong him no great matter--a glance sidelong at his living spouse, he were inclined to drive thriftier bargain by bespeaking four gravestones in lot better pleased with rough old whaling captain, who gave directions for broad marble slab, divided into two compartments, one of to contain an epitaph deceased wife, other left vacant, till death should engrave his own name there As is frequently the case whalers of Martha's Vineyard, stormbeaten widower's life tossed away on distant seas, that out of twenty years of matrimony he had spent scarce three, and those at scattered intervals, beneath his own roof Thus the wife youth, though she died and her declining age, retained the bridal dewdrops fresh around her memory