"Dear Friends, we were first cousins, and what not: To toil as masons was our humble lot. As just returning from a house of call, The parson bade us set about his wall. Flush'd with good liquor, cheerfully we strove To place big stones below and big above; We made too quick work--down the fabric came; It crush'd our vitals: people call'd out shame! But we heard nothing, mute as fish we lay, And shall lie sprawling till the judgment day. From our misfortune this good moral know-- Never to work too fast nor drink too slow." The other is at Cray ford, and is as follows: "Here lieth the body of Peter Isnet, 30 years clerk of this parish. He lived respected as a Pious and a Mirthful Man, and died on his way to church to assist at a wedding on the 31st day of March 1811, aged 70 years. The inhabitants of Crayford have raised this stone to his cheerful memory and as a Tribute to his Long and Faithful Services. "The age of this clerk was just three score and ten, Nearly half of which time he had sung out _Amen!_ In his youth he was married, like other young men, But his wife died one day, and he chanted _Amen!_ A second he took. She departed: what then? He married and buried a third, with _Amen!_ Thus his joys and his sorrows were _Treble_, but then, His voice was deep _Bass_ as he sung out _Amen!_ On the Horn he could blow as well as most men, So his horn was exalted in blowing _Amen!_ But he lost all his wind after Three Score and Ten, And here with Three Wives he waits till again The trumpet shall rouse him to sing out _Amen!_" The habit of imitation which we have noticed in the masonry of the gravestone is even more pronounced in the epitaphs. One of the most familiar verses is that which usually reads: "Affliction sore long time I bore, Physicians were in vain, Till Death did seize and God did please To ease me of my pain." These lines, however, have undergone variations out of number, a not infrequent device being to adapt them to circumstances by such changes as-- "Affliction sore short time I bore," etc. The same idea has an extended application at the grave of Joseph Crate, who died in 1805, aged 42 years, and is buried at Hendon Churchyard: "Affliction sore long time I bore, Physicians were in vain: My children dear and wife, whose care Assuaged my every pain, Are left behind to mourn my fate: Then Christians let them find That pity which their case excites And prove to them most kind." But the most startling perversion of the original text I saw in the churchyard at Saundersfoot, South Wales, where the stone-carver had evidently had his lesson by dictation, and made many original mistakes, the most notable of which was in the second line:-- "Affliction sore long time I bore, _Anitions_ were in vain," etc. The following from Hyden, Yorkshire, is remarkable: