monotonous. Last summer, his services had been in request throughout inhabited Maine, to “peddle gravestones and collect bills.” The Gravestone-Peddler is an institution of New England. His wares are wanted, or will be wanted, by every one. Without discriminating the bereaved households, he presents himself at any door, with attractive drawings of his wares, and seduces people into paying the late tribute to their great-grandfather, or laying up a monument for themselves against the inevitable day of demand. His customers select from his samples a tasteful “set of stones”; and next summer he drives up and unloads the marble, with the names well spelt, and the cherub’s head artistically chiselled by the best workmen of Boston. Cancut told us, as an instance of judicious economy, how, when he called once upon a recent widow to ask what he could do in his line for her deceased husband’s tomb, she chose from his patterns neat head- and foot-stones for the dear defunct, and then bargained with him to throw in a small pair for her boy Johnny, — a poor, sick crittur, that would be wanting his monument long before next summer.
This lugubrious business had failed to infect Mr. Cancut with corresponding deportment. Undertakers are always sombre in dreary mockery of woe. Sextons are solemncholy, if not solemn. I fear Cancut was too cheerful for his trade, and therefore had abandoned it.
Such was our guide, the captain, steersman, and ballaster of our vessel. We struck our bargain with
