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 or
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