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.
Wigglesworth's hardest marble will retain the deepest strokes of his
chisel.

An elderly lady came to bespeak a monument for her first love, who had
been killed by a whale in the Pacific Ocean no less than forty years
before. It was singular that so strong an impression of early feeling
should have survived through the changes of her subsequent life, in
the course of which she had been a wife and a mother, and, so far as I
could judge, a comfortable and happy woman. Reflecting within myself,
it appeared to me that this lifelong sorrow--as, in all good faith,
she deemed it--was one of the most fortunate circumstances of her
history. It had given an ideality to her mind; it had kept her purer
and less earthly than she would otherwise have been, by drawing a
portion of her sympathies apart from earth. Amid the throng of
enjoyments, and the pressure of worldly care, and all the warm
materialism of this life, she had communed with a vision, and had been
the better for such intercourse. Faithful to the husband of her
maturity, and loving him with a far more real affection than she ever