It
recorded the life and death of an aged pair who had been married fifty
years, concluding with the couplet--
"A long time this may seem to be, But it did not seem long to we."
The whole story of a human life lay in that last verse. True, it was not
good grammar; but they had got through fifty years of wedded life probably
without any knowledge of grammar to harmonise or to shorten them, and I
daresay, had they been acquainted with the lesson he had put into their
dumb mouths, they would have been aware of no ground of quarrel with the
poetic stone-cutter, who most likely had thrown the verses in when he made
his claim for the stone and the cutting. Having learnt this one by heart, I
went about looking for anything more in the shape of sepulchral flora that
might interest or amuse my crippled darling; nor had I searched long before
I found one, the sole but triumphant recommendation of which was the
thorough "puzzle-headedness" of its construction. I quite reckoned on
seeing Connie trying to make it out, looking as bewildered over its
excellent grammar, as the poet of the other ought to have looked over his
rhymes, ere he gave in to the use of the nominative after a preposition.
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