A gentlewoman of the town , receiving news of her husband 's loss at sea , had bespoken a handsome slab of marble , and came daily to watch the progress of my friend 's chisel . One afternoon , when the good lady and the sculptor were in the very midst of the epitaph -- which the departed spirit might have been greatly comforted to read -- who should walk into the workshop but the deceased himself , in substance as well as spirit ! He had been picked up at sea , and stood in no present need of tombstone or epitaph . `` And how , '' inquired I , `` did his wife bear the shock of joyful surprise ? '' `` Why , '' said the old man , deepening the grin of a death 's - head on which his chisel was just then employed , `` I really felt for the poor woman ; it was one of my best pieces of marble -- and to be thrown away on a living man ! '' A comely woman with a pretty rosebud of a daughter came to select a gravestone for a twin-daughter , who had died a month before . I was impressed with the different nature of their feelings for the dead . The mother was calm and woefully resigned , fully conscious of her loss , as of a treasure which she had not always possessed , and therefore had been aware that it might be taken from her ; but the daughter evidently had no real knowledge of what Death 's doings were . Her thoughts knew , but not her heart . It seemed to me that by the print and pressure which the dead sister had left upon the survivor 's spirit her feelings were almost the same as if she still stood side by side and arm in arm with the departed , looking at the slabs of marble , and once or twice she glanced around with a sunny smile , which , as its sister-smile had faded for ever , soon grew confusedly overshadowed . Perchance her consciousness was truer than her reflection ; perchance her dead sister was a closer companion than in life . The mother and daughter talked a long while with Mr. Wigglesworth about a suitable epitaph , and finally chose an ordinary verse of ill-matched rhymes which had already been inscribed upon innumerable tombstones . But when we ridicule the triteness of monumental verses , we forget that Sorrow reads far deeper in them than we can , and finds a profound and individual purport in what seems so vague and inexpressive unless interpreted by her . She makes the epitaph anew , though the selfsame words may have served for a thousand graves . `` And yet , '' said I afterward to Mr. Wigglesworth , `` they might have made a better choice than this . While you were discussing the subject I was struck by at least a dozen simple and natural expressions from the lips of both mother and daughter . One of these would have formed an inscription equally original and appropriate . '' `` No , no ! '' replied the sculptor , shaking his head ; `` there is a good deal of comfort to be gathered from these little old scraps of poetry , and so I always recommend them in preference to any new-fangled ones . And somehow they seem to stretch to suit a great grief and shrink to fit a small one . ''
It was not seldom that ludicrous images were excited by what took place between Mr. XXXXX and his customers .
Wigglesworth afternoon daily gentlewoman month rosebud sister-smile slabs triteness twin-daughter