We had just dined in the little Parisian restaurant where Americans are in the habit of going in order to obtain those truly French delicacies, pork and beans, buckwheat cakes, corned beef, apple pie, and overgrown oysters. I knew a man from Chicago who dined at this restaurant every day during the entire month spent by him in Paris, and who, at the end of that time, said that he was heartily sick of French cookery. Thus does the profound study of the manners and customs of foreign nations enlighten the mind and ripen the judgment.
The Colonel had finished his twelfth buckwheat cake and had lighted his cigar, when he casually and reprovingly remarked to young Lathrop, who, on principle, was disputing the bill with the waiter, that “he was making more trouble than Thompson’s tombstone.” Being called upon to explain this dark saying, he stretched his legs to their limit, tipped back his chair, knocked the ashes of his cigar among the remnants of his pork and beans, and launched into his story.
“In the town where I was raised—and I’m not going to give away the name of it at present—there were two brothers, James and John Thompson. They were twins and about forty years old, as I should judge. James was a bachelor and John he was a widower, and they were both pretty well to do in the world, for those times at least. John was a farmer and James was a wagon maker and owned the village hearse besides, which he let out for funerals, generally driving it himself, so that any profit that was to be made out of a melancholy occasion he could make without sharing it with anybody. Both the men were close-fisted, and would look at a dollar until their eyesight began to fail before they could bring themselves to spend it. It was this miserly spirit that brought about the trouble that I’m going to tell you of.
“After John Thompson had been a widower so long that the unmarried women had given up calling on him to ask his advice about the best way of raising money for the heathen, and had lost all expectation that any one of them would ever gather him in, he suddenly ups and marries Maria Slocum, who used to keep a candy store next door to the school-house and had been a confirmed old maid for twenty years. She had a little money, though, and folks did say that she could have married James Thompson if she had been willing to take the risk; but the fact that James always had the hearse standing in his carriage-house made him unpopular with the ladies. She took John because his views on infant baptism agreed with hers, and he took her because she had a good reputation for making pies and was economical and religious.
“The Thompson brothers owned burial lots in the new cemetery that were close together. James, of course, had, so far, no use for his lot, but John had begun to settle his by burying his first wife in about the middle of it. The lot was a good-sized one, with accommodation for a reasonably large family without crowding them, and without, at the same time, scattering them in any unsocial way. I don’t know how it came about, but no sooner was John married than he took a notion to put up a tombstone over his first wife. He thought that as he was going to incur such an expense he would manage it so that he wouldn’t have to incur it again; and so he got up a design for a combination family tombstone, and had it made, and carved, and lettered, and set up in his burial lot.
“Near the top of the stone was John Thompson’s name, the date of his birth, and a blank space for the date of his death. Next came the name of ‘Sarah Jane, beloved wife of the above,’ and the date of her birth and death. Then came the name of ‘Maria, beloved and lamented wife of the above John Thompson,’ with the date of her birth and a space for the date of her death. You see, John worked in this little compliment about Maria being ‘lamented’ so as to reconcile her to having the date of her birth given away to the public. The lower half of the tombstone was left vacant so as to throw in a few children should any such contingency arise, and the whole advertisement ended with a verse of a hymn setting forth that the entire Thompson family was united in a better land above.
“The cost of the affair was about the same as that of one ordinary tombstone, the maker agreeing to enter the dates of John’s death and of his wife’s death free of charge whenever the time for so doing might arrive; and also agreeing to enter the names of any children that might appear at a very low rate. The tombstone attracted a great deal of attention, and the summer visitors from the city never failed to go and see it. John was proud of his stroke of economy, and used to say that he wasn’t in danger of being bankrupted by any epidemic, as those people were who held that every person must have his separate tombstone. Everybody admitted that the Thompson tombstone gave more general amusement to the public than any other tombstone in the whole cemetery. Every summer night John used to walk over to his lot and smoke his pipe, leaning on the fence and reading over the inscriptions. And then he would go and take a fresh look at the Rogers’ lot, where there were nine different tombstones, and chuckle to think how much they must have cost old man Rogers, who had never thought of a combination family tomb. In the course of about three years the inscriptions had grown, for there had been added the names of Charles Henry and William Everett Thompson, ‘children of the above John and Maria Thompson,’ and John calculated that with squeezing he could enter four more children on the same stone, though he didn’t really think that he would ever have any call so to do.
“Well, a little after the end of the third year John’s troubles began. He took up with Second Advent notions and believed that the end of the world would arrive, as per schedule, on the 21st of November, at 8:30 A.M. Maria said that this was not orthodox and that she wouldn’t allow any such talk around her house. Both of them were set in their ways, and what with John expressing his views with his whip-handle and Maria expressing hers with the rolling-pin, they didn’t seem to get on very well together, and one day Maria left the house and took the train to Chicago, where she got a divorce and came back a free and independent woman. That wasn’t all: James Thompson now saw his chance. He offered to sell out the hearse business, and after waiting ten months, so as to give no opportunity for scandal, Maria married him.
“John didn’t seem to mind the loss of his wife very much until it happened to occur to him that his combination family tombstone would have to be altered, now that Maria was not his wife any longer. He was a truthful man, and he felt that he couldn’t sleep in peace under a tombstone that was constantly telling such a thumping lie as that Maria was resting in the same burying-lot and that she was his beloved wife, when, in point of fact, she was another man’s wife and would be, at the proper time, lying in that other man’s part of the cemetery. So he made up his mind to have the marble-cutter chisel out Maria’s name and the date of her birth. But before this was done he saw that it wouldn’t be the square thing so far as Charles Henry and William Everett were concerned. It would be playing it low down on those helpless children to allow that tombstone to assert that they were the children of John Thompson and some unspecified woman called Maria, who, whatever else she may have been, was certainly not John Thompson’s wife. Matters would not be improved if the name of Maria were to be cut out of the line which stated the parentage of the children, for in that case it would appear that they had been independently developed by John, without the intervention of any wife, which would be sure to give rise to gossip and all sorts of suspicions.
“DIDN’T SEEM TO GET ON VERY WELL TOGETHER.”
“Of course the difficulty could have been settled by erasing from the tombstone all reference to Maria and her two children, but in that case a separate stone for the children would some day become necessary, and, what was of more consequence, John’s grand idea of a combination tombstone would have to be completely abandoned. John was not a hasty man, and after thinking the matter over until the mental struggle turned his hair gray, he decided to compromise the matter by putting a sort of petticoat around the lower half of the tombstone, which would hide all reference to Maria and the children. This was easily done with the aid of an old pillow-case, and the tombstone became more an object of interest to the public than ever, while John, so to speak, sat down to wait for better times.
“THE TOMBSTONE BECAME MORE AN OBJECT OF INTEREST TO THE PUBLIC THAN EVER.”
“Now, James had been thinking over the tombstone problem, and fancied that he had found a solution of it that would put money in his own pocket and at the same time satisfy his brother. He proposed to John that the inscription should be altered so as to read: ‘Maria, formerly wife of John and afterward of James Thompson,’ and that a hand should be carved on the stone with an index-finger pointing toward James’ lot, and a line in small type saying, ‘See small tombstone.’ James said that he would pay the cost of putting up a small uninscribed stone in his own lot over the remains of Maria—waiting, of course, until she should come to be remains—and that John could pay the cost of altering the inscriptions on the large stone. The two brothers discussed this scheme for months, each of them being secretly satisfied with it, but John maintaining that James should pay all the expenses.
“This James would not do, for he reasoned that unless John came to his terms the combination tombstone would be of no good to anybody, and that if he remained firm John would come round to his proposal in time.
“There isn’t the least doubt that this would have been the end of the affair, if it had not been that James chuckled over it so much that one day he chuckled a fishbone into his throat and choked to death on the spot. He was buried in his own lot, with nothing but a wooden headboard to mark the spot. His widow said that if he had been anxious to have a swell marble monument he would have made provision for it in his lifetime, and as he had done nothing of the kind, she could not see that she had any call to waste her money on worldly vanities.
“How did this settle the affair of the combination tombstone? I’m just telling you. You see, by this time the world had not come to an end, and John, who always hated people who didn’t keep their engagements, seeing that the Second Adventists didn’t keep theirs, left them and returned to the regular Baptist fold. When his brother died he went to the funeral, and did what little he could, in an inexpensive way, to comfort the widow. The long and short of it was that they became as friendly as they ever had been, and John finally proposed that Maria should marry him again. ‘You know, Maria,’ he said, ‘that we never disagreed except about that Second Advent nonsense. You were right about that and I was wrong, as the event has proved, and now that we’re agreed once more, I don’t see as there is anything to hinder our getting married again.’
“Maria said that she had a comfortable support, and she couldn’t feel that it was the will of Providence for her to be married so often, considering how many poor women there were who couldn’t get a single husband.
“‘Well,’ continued John, ‘there is that there tombstone. It always pleased you and I was always proud of it. If we don’t get married again that tombstone is as good as thrown away, and it seems unchristian to throw away a matter of seventy-five dollars when the whole thing could be arranged so easy.’
“The argument was one which Maria felt that she could not resist, and so, after she had mourned James Thompson for a fitting period, she married John a second time, and the tombstone’s reputation for veracity was restored. John and Maria often discussed the feasibility of selling James’ lot and burying him where the combination tombstone would take him in, but there was no more room for fresh inscriptions, and besides, John didn’t see his way clear to stating in a short and impressive way the facts as to the relationship between James and Maria. So, on the whole, he judged it best to let James sleep in his own lot, and let the combination tombstone testify only to the virtues of John Thompson and his family. That’s the story of Thompson’s tombstone, and if you don’t believe it I can show you a photograph of the stone with all the inscriptions. I’ve got it in my trunk at this very moment, and when we go back to the hotel, if you remind me of it, I’ll get it out.”
