Transcriber'sNotes:
Transcriber's Notes Non-standard spellings, typos and non-standard punctuation have been left as they appear in the original, except in a few cases where standardization was needed for clarity."Quaint Epitaphs"
Susan Darling Safford.
Copyright, 1895,
By SUSAN DARLING SAFFORD.
ALFRED MUDGE & SON, PRINTERS, 24 FRANKLIN STREET, BOSTON.
This collection of epitaphs was started in a very modest fashion aboutthirty-five years ago, when the compiler found great pleasure insearching all the graveyards near her Vermont home for quaintinscriptions upon old tombstones. It was neither a morbid curiosity nora spirit of melancholy that attracted her to the weather-beaten slabs ofmarble and slate, but rather a fondness for studying human eccentricityas revealed in whimsical epitaphs. In almost every graveyard one canfind
"Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture decked"
and these have given many hours of pleasure to one who finds in suchsombre elegies of the dead most interesting reflections of the living.
As the only purpose of carrying on such odd researches was to satisfy afondness for freakish ingenuity, much less interest was found in thethousands of amusing epitaphs that are penned by writers for comicpapers or by wags in general. Fictitious inscriptions lack the charm ofauthenticity, which in the case of epitaphs is decidedly more desirablethan imagination. All selections which could not be definitely locatedare classed by themselves, but many of these are known to have actuallyexisted, though for varying reasons the collector is unable to vouch fortheir exact locality.
In a few instances the names have been changed, where it was thoughtthat verbatim copies of the epitaphs might prove invidious to therelatives or friends of the dead. It is hoped that the division intolocalities will prove a convenience to a majority of readers, whonaturally will not care to read such a book through at one sitting, butrather to pick it up now and then when in the mood for such lightentertainment as it can afford. The spelling has necessarily beenchanged at times from the antiquated and almost hieroglyphic forms whichwould defy the most careful typography; but in general the orthographyand punctuation are copied verbatim from the originals.
The compiler trusts that it is not an act of unreasonable presumption topublish a book of epitaphs when so many already exist. In fact it waspartly because of the numerous requests for an examination of hercollection that the plan of publishing it was adopted. Such an ambitiousconsummation of her pleasant labor never occurred to her until heroriginal note-books became badly worn and torn in their travels fromfriend to friend, from town to town, and it is hardly an exaggeration tosay that they have been from Portland to Portland, from Augusta toA