“Nobody cares anyhow what is on another's gravestone, and if any stop to read it it is simply to make fun of it. To read our own epitaphs and know how little we merit the extravagant praise there is one of our sharpest pangs. When we have shown a proper degree of shame and remorse over them, then we are allowed a short time in which we can endeavor to efface the lying records. We are given the privilege of scouring them with sandpaper and holystone. We hope that when the undeserved epitaph is all worn away we may be given our passports. “I suppose you have noticed how much sooner a gravestone wears away than a building stone? Now, here is a granite monument, and down there, across the street, is a building with the whole front of the same stone, quarried in the same year, some of it the same week. The house is as good as ever, but look at the stone in the monument. That tells the story. “See that woman down there trying to rub out the lies that her family put there. I wonder why it is that the survivors seem to feel constrained to put all that stuff on the headstone?” “I was just wondering,” said the young man, “how it would be if any ghost should outlive his or her stone. I heard there was a great fire here once that destroyed many of them. And I know of a baker who took three or four stones from a cemetery to bake his bread on. The names were smoothed off, and I cannot exactly understand how it all is. Is it that the dead are held for the sins of their survivors in putting all the false, if fond, words there?” “No, not at all. If it were not this it would be something else.” All this time the ghost was rubbing away at his own headstone with greater vigor than one could have expected, and as the young man looked at it the ghost said: “Pretty tough work, but I have succeeded in rubbing out nearly half this letter in only sixty years. This word is ‘charitable,’ and I never gave a cent to anybody in charity. I told you I would explain. Well, here is my epitaph, ‘In memory of Captain, a pious and benevolent man, whose noble and upright character, calm demeanor and charitable heart endeared him to all who knew him. He passed away, leaving a sorrowing spouse to whom he was devoted, in the surety of a life above. He was captain of the _____, and engaged in the Liverpool and West India trade.” This is a pretty mess to fix up over your head, now isn’t it? Piety and the West India trade didn’t go together in those days. Calm demeanor! Huh! They called me ‘Old Hurricane.’ And I was worse than a pirate, for I was in the slave trade. It is all over now, and the evil I did can’t be undone, but though it may seem long, there will come a time when I—even I—shall have become fit for my passport.