At one period a certain quatrain had a great run in Tiverton; it was the epitaph of the day. Noting how it overspread that stony soil, you picture to yourself the modest pride of its composer; unless indeed, it had been copied from an older inscription in an English yard, and transplanted through the heart and brain of some settler whose thoughts were ever flitting back. Thus it runs in decorous metre:-- "Dear husband, now my life is passed, You have dearly loved me to the last. Grieve not for me, but pity take On my dear children for my sake." But one sorrowing widower amended it, according to his wife's direction, so that it bore a new and significant meaning. He was charged to "pity take On my dear parent for my sake." The lesson was patent. His mother-in-law had always lived with him, and she was "difficult." Who knows how keenly the sick woman's mind ran on the possibilities of reef and quicksand for the alien two left alone without her guiding hand? So she set the warning of her love and fear to be no more forgotten while she herself should be remembered. The husband was a silent man. He said very little about his intentions; performance was enough for him. Therefore it happened that his "parent," adopted perforce, knew nothing about this public charge until she came upon it, on her first Sunday visit, surveying the new glory of the stone. The story goes that she stood before it, a square, portentous figure in black alpaca and warlike mitts, and that she uttered these irrevocable words:-- "Pity on _me_! Well, I guess he won't! I'll go to the poor-farm fust!" And Monday morning, spite of his loyal dissuasions, she packed her "blue chist," and drove off to a far-away cousin, who got her "nussin'" to do. Another lesson from the warning finger of Death: let what was life not dream that it can sway the life that is, after the two part company.