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. Wigglesworth and his customers. A shrewd
gentlewoman, who kept a tavern in the town, was anxious to obtain two
or three gravestones for the deceased members of her family, and to
pay for these solemn commodities by taking the sculptor to board.
Hereupon a fantasy arose in my mind, of good Mr. Wigglesworth sitting
down to dinner at a broad, flat tombstone, carving one of his own
plump little marble cherubs, gnawing a pair of cross-bones, and
drinking out of a hollow death's-head, or perhaps a lachrymatory vase,
or sepulchral urn; while his hostess's dead children waited on him at
the ghastly banquet. On communicating this nonsensical picture to the
old man, he laughed heartily, and pronounced my humor to be of the
right sort.

"I have lived at such a table all my days," said he, "and eaten no
small quantity of slate and marble."

"Hard fare!" rejoined I, smiling; "but you seemed to have found it
excellent of digestion, too."

A man of fifty, or thereabouts, with a harsh, unpleasant countenance,
ordered a stone for the grave of his bitter enemy with whom he had
waged warfare half a lifetime, to their mutual misery and ruin. The
secret of this phenomenon was, that hatred had become the sustenance
and enjoyment of the poor wretch's soul; it had supplied the place of
all kindly affections; it had been really a bond of sympathy between
himself and the man who shared the passion; and when its object died,