Told by the Colonel

by W. L. Alden

“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.’