Where the epitaph-maker of that time occasionally went wrong was in his efforts to get his fantasticalness in willy-nilly, or in a silly play upon words, as in the following example from the little village of Boyton on the Wylie river, on a man named Barnes, who died in 1638: Stay Passenger and view a stack of corne Reaped and laid up in the Almighty's Barne Or rather Barnes of Choyce and precious grayne Put in his garner there still to remaine. But in the very next village--that of Stockton--I came on the best I have found of that time. It is, however, a little earlier in time, before fantasticalness came into fashion, and in spirit is of the nobler age. It is to Elizabeth Potecary, who died in 1590. Here she interred lies deprived of breath Whose light of virtue once on Earth did shyne Who life contemned ne feared ghostly death Whom worlde ne worldlye cares could cause repine Resolved to die with hope in Heaven placed Her Christ to see whom living she embraced In paynes most fervent still in zeal most strong In death delighting God to magnifye How long will thou forgett me Lord! this cry In greatest pangs was her sweet harmonye Forgett thee? No! he will not thee forgett In books of Lyfe thy name for aye is set. And with Elizabeth Potecary, that dear lady dead these three centuries and longer, I must bring this particular Little Thing to an end. XXXVI THE DEAD AND THE LIVING The last was indeed in essence a small thing, but was running to such a great length it had to be ended before my selected best inscriptions were used up, also before the true answer to the question: "Why, if inscriptions do not greatly interest me, do I haunt churchyards?" was given. Let me give it now: it will serve as a suitable conclusion to what has already been said on the subject in this and in a former book. When we have sat too long in a close, hot, brilliantly-lighted, over-crowded room, a sense of unutterable relief is experienced on coming forth into the pure, fresh, cold night and filling our lungs with air uncontaminated with the poisonous gases discharged from other lungs. An analogous sense of immense relief, of escape from confinement and joyful liberation, is experienced mentally when after long weeks or months in London I repair to a rustic village. Yet, like the person who has in his excitement been inhaling poison into his system for long hours, I am not conscious of the restraint at the time. Not consciously conscious. The mind was too exclusively occupied with itself--its own mind affairs. The cage was only recognised as a cage, an unsuitable habitation, when I was out of it. An example, this, of the eternal disharmony between the busy mind and nature--or Mother Nature, let us say; the more the mind is concentrated on its own business the blinder we are to the signals of disapproval on her kindly countenance, the deafer to her warning whispers in our ear.