Gravestones , therefore , have generally been an article of imported merchandise . In my walks through the burial-ground of Edgartown -- where the dead have lain so long that the soil , once enriched by their decay , has returned to its original barrenness -- in that ancient burial-ground I noticed much variety of monumental sculpture . The elder stones , dated a century back or more , have borders elaborately carved with flowers and are adorned with a multiplicity of death 's - heads , crossbones , scythes , hour-glasses , and other lugubrious emblems of mortality , with here and there a winged cherub to direct the mourner 's spirit upward . These productions of Gothic taste must have been quite beyond the colonial skill of the day , and were probably carved in London and brought across the ocean to commemorate the defunct worthies of this lonely isle . The more recent monuments are mere slabs of slate in the 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 from the gray rocks of the island , evidently by the unskilled hands of surviving friends and relatives . On some there were merely the initials of a name ; some were inscribed with misspelt prose or rhyme , in deep letters which the moss and wintry rain of many years had not been able to obliterate . These , these were graves where loved ones slept . It is 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 may be sure that they copy from the record on their hearts . My acquaintance the sculptor -- he may share that title with Greenough , since the dauber of signs is a painter as well as Raphael -- had found a ready market for all his blank slabs of marble and full occupation in lettering and ornamenting them . He was an elderly man , a descendant of the old Puritan family of Wigglesworth , with a certain simplicity and singleness both of heart and mind which , methinks , is more rarely found among us Yankees than in any other community of people . In spite of his gray head and wrinkled brow , he was quite like a child in all matters save what had some reference to his own business ; he seemed , unless my fancy misled me , to view mankind in no other relation than as people in want of tombstones , and his literary attainments evidently comprehended very little either of prose of poetry which had not at one time or other been inscribed on slate or marble . His sole task and office among the immortal pilgrims of the tomb -- the duty for which Providence had sent the old man into the world , as it were with a chisel in his hand -- was to label the dead bodies , lest their names should be forgotten at the resurrection . Yet he had not failed , within a narrow scope , to gather a few sprigs of earthly , and more than earthly , wisdom -- the harvest of many a grave . And , lugubrious as his calling might appear , he was 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 with that sort of spirit which impels a man to sing at his labor . On the whole , I found Mr. Wigglesworth an entertaining , and often instructive , if not an interesting , character ; and , partly for the charm of his society , and still more because his work has an invariable attraction for `` man that is born of woman , '' I was accustomed to spend some hours a day at his workshop . The quaintness of his remarks and their not infrequent truth -- a truth condensed and pointed by the limited sphere of his view -- gave a raciness to his talk which mere worldliness and general cultivation would at once have destroyed . Sometimes we would discuss the respective merits of the various qualities of marble , numerous slabs of which were resting against the walls of the shop , or sometimes an hour or two would pass quietly without a word on either side while I watched how neatly his chisel struck out letter after letter of the names of the Nortons , the Mayhews , the Luces , the Daggets , and other immemorial families of the Vineyard . Often with an artist 's pride the good old sculptor would speak of favorite productions of his skill which were scattered throughout the village graveyards of New England . But my chief and most instructive amusement was to witness his interviews with his customers , who held interminable consultations about the form and fashion of the desired monuments , the buried excellence to be commemorated , the anguish to be expressed , and finally the lowest price in dollars and cents for which a marble transcript of their feelings might be obtained .
Really , my mind received many fresh ideas which perhaps may remain in it even longer than Mr. XXXXX 's hardest marble will retain the deepest strokes of his chisel .
Edgartown Gravestones Nortons Providence Wigglesworth barrenness crossbones eulogies hour sprigs