SELECTED POETRY.

Cromwell Argus, Volume IV, Issue 184, 20 May 1873, Page 7

SELECTED POETRY.

A DIFFERENT STORY. A peripatetic vendor of tombstones large and small, While travelling through Darke county, selling stones to one and all, Was told by a worthy deacon, whom he chanced to meet on the way, Of a farmer but ten miles farther, who one year ago on that day ' Had lost his wife, and perhaps might want something in the tombstone way. So he thanked this solemn deacon, and onward took his way To the residence of the farmer, which he reached at three that day ; And hastening in through the farm-yard, he knocked at the oaken door, And was told that the farmer was in a field, some three miles off, or more. So tying his horse to the fence-rail, he made his way through the dirt, Till he found the field and the farmer, whom he reached without bodily hurt ; And hitching up his coat-collar, he at once to work set on ; He sympathised with the farmer, and wanted to sell him a stone Which would point to the Heaven above them, where the fanner’s wife had gone. He spoke for nearly an hour, and the farmer said never a word ; He was trying to get it in edgeways as soon as he could be heard ; And so at last, when a chance came, he laid down his hoe and began, And these are the words the farmer said to the talkative tombstone man : “ ’Tis true, good sir, that I lost my wife just one year ago to-day, But she vamosed with some other chap—in other words ran away, And from that time to the present I’ve never heard from her yet, And so I don’t think you can sell me a stone, in fact, on that you may bet. ” The farmer looked up for the pedlar, with a smile on his care-furrowed face, But the pedlar had sped on the wings of the wind, and was half a mile from the place.