Page 85 - Graveyard

G r av e y ar d H u m o r | 83

For now he’s dead and gone this fault appears so small,
A little thing would make her think it was no fault at all.

235. From the Burying-ground, of Concord, Massachusetts:—

God wills us free—man wills us slaves;
I will as God wills: God’s will be done.
Here lies the body of
John Jack,
A native of Africa, who died
March, 1773, aged about sixty years.
Though born in a land of slavery,
He was born free;
Though he lived in a land of liberty,
He lived a slave;
Till, by his honest, though stolen, labours,
He acquired the source of slavery,
Which gave him his freedom:
Though not long before
Death, the great Tyrant,
Gave him his final emancipation,
And put him on a footing with kings.
Though a slave to vice,
He practised those virtues
Without which kings are but slaves.

236. By Dr. Arbuthnot, on the infamous Col. Chantres:—

Here continueth to rot the body of Francis Chantres, who, with an
inflexible constancy and inimitable uniformity of life, persisted, in spite
of age and infirmities, in the practice of every human vice excepting
prodigality and hypocrisy: his insatiable avarice exempting him from
the first, his matchless impudence from the second. Nor was he more
singular in the undeviating pravity of his manners than successful in
accumulating wealth. For without trade or profession, without trust of
public money, and without bribe-worthy service, he acquired, or more
properly created, a ministerial estate. He was the only person of his