In Search of Gravestones Old and Curious

by W. T. Vincent

1. Cut into stone.

2. Anchor of iron on dwarf stone pillar.

3. Heart and anchor of thin iron on dwarf stone pillar.

4. Iron plate and rod.

5. Wooden cross.

6. Wooden cross.

FIG. 96.—AT LAUFEN.

The average height of these mementoes was about 2 feet, and all the dates which I saw were of the last twenty-five years. Permanence indeed is apparently not considered as it is with us in the like circumstances. The British gravestone is trusted to perpetuate at least the names of our departed friends down to the days of our posterity, but the provision made by our neighbours seems to have been for the existing generation only. Posterity does not trouble the villagers of Switzerland nor their prototypes of other nations around them. This fact was strongly exemplified at Neuhausen, a small place on the other bank of the Rhine, "five minutes from Germany" we were told.