Unusual Epitaphs

Unusual Epitaphs

Chenango Semi-Weekly Telegraph, January 31, 1885

Every intelligent person has read with growing delight that masterpiece of English composition, "Gray's Elegy in a Country Church Yard," and has had his attention called to the poet's graceful tribute to the humble one whose lot was cast amid lowly surroundings.

Here rests his head upon a lap of earth,

A youth to fortune and to fame unknown;

Fair Science smiled not at his humble birth,

But Melancholy marked him for her own.

The services of the wag or professional rhymester are frequently brought into play in saying what others only dare to think. The truth of this is illustrated in the subjoined stanza

He lieth here

Who lied before;

But since he lieth here,

He lies no more.

Closely related to the foregoing, by the ties of consanguinity, was the lawyer in western Pennsylvania, concerning whom some evil genius wrote this epitaph

Here lies poor Ham, and what is strange

Grim death in him has wrought no change;

He always lied, and he always will.

He once lied aloud, but now he lies still.

Some poor soldier in the campaign against Corinth in 1862 was remembered by a comrade in this quaint couplet.

Here lies Jim Crow

For all I know.

Intemperance teaches its victims some important lessons which are very often learned after it is too late.  It is just as true in the mental and moral world as it is in the physical world that "Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap."  This accounts for the sentiment which marked the final resting place of the inebriate:

Beneath these stones

Rest the bones of Theodosius Grim;

He took his beer from year to year

Until his bier took him.

It is refreshing to witness some variation in the make up of epitaphs.  In the following will be exhibited a strange combination of the spirit of mammon and parental affection:

Here lies our darling little babe;

She neither cries nor hollers;

She live but one and twenty days

And cost us forty dollars.

When the gold fever broke out in 1849 the rush to California was very great.  One of the adventurers from an eastern State realized fully the truth of the declaration, "It is not good for man to be alone."  In consequence of his faith he married, in succession, three courageous women, who dared to go to the far west. After they had all died in succession, he concluded to provide a suitable monument to perpetuate their memory and to proclaim his good qualities as a husband.  Collecting their remains and placing them in a common receptacle he erected a monument to their common memory. It contained this unique inscription:

Stranger, pause and shed a tear,

 For May Ann lies buried here,

Mixed in some mysterious manner

With Nancy Jane and probably Hanner.

Addison was a prince among literary men, and yet his domestic life was far from being perfect, if any credence can be placed in the sentiment said to have been placed upon his wife's tomb.

Here lies my wife,

Here let her be.

She's now at rest

And so am I

There is probably less of complacency in it than is found in the inscription upon the tomb of a fair damsel whose friends, while appreciating the blessings of rest on the one hand, were humorously mindful of some inconveniences on the other.  Here is the inscription

Here lies our Mary Ann at rest

Pillowed now on Abraham's breast.

It's very nice for Mary Ann,

But rather rough on Abraham.

Upon a tombstone in an old Scotch cemetery is found an inscription which reveals an unusual amount of post mortem felicity and restfulness, as well as consummate skill in the use of appropriate words.

Here at length I repose,

And my spirit also is, 

With the tips of toes and the end of my nose

Turend up to the roots of the daisies.

In the Wester Reserve of Ohio is a tombstone which expressed filial regard in metrical style thus

Here lies our father beneath this sod,

His spirit has gone up to his God,

We never more shall hear his tread,

Nor see the wen upon his head.