A Cheerful Temper

　　Here rests,- ah, it makes one feel mournful to think of him!-but here rests a man who, during sixty-seven years, was neverremembered to have said a good thing; he lived only in the hope ofhaving a good idea. At last he felt convinced, in his own mind, thathe really had one, and was so delighted that he positively died of joyat the thought of having at last caught an idea.

　　Nobody got anythingby it; indeed, no one even heard what the good thing was. Now I canimagine that this same idea may prevent him from resting quietly inhis grave; for suppose that to produce a good effect, it isnecessary to bring out his new idea at breakfast, and that he can onlymake his appearance on earth at midnight, as ghosts are believedgenerally to do; why then this good idea would not suit the hour,and the man would have to carry it down again with him into the grave-that must be a troubled grave.

　　the woman who lies here was so remarkably stingy, that duringher life she would get up in the night and mew, that her neighborsmight think she kept a cat. What a miser she was!

　　Here rests a young lady, of a good family, who would always makeher voice heard in society, and when she sang "Mi manca la voce,"*it was the only true thing she ever said in her life.

　　* "I want a voice," or, "I have no voice."

　　Here lies a maiden of another description. She was engaged to bemarried,- but, her story is one of every-day life; we will leave herto rest in the grave.

　　Here rests a widow, who, with music in her tongue, carried gall inher heart. She used to go round among the families near, and searchout their faults, upon which she preyed with all the envy and maliceof her nature. This is a family grave. the members of this family heldso firmly together in their opinions, that they would believe in noother. If the newspapers, or even the whole world, said of a certainsubject, "It is so-and-so;" and a little schoolboy declared he hadlearned quite differently, they would take his assertion as the onlytrue one, because he belonged to the family. And it is well known thatif the yard-cock belonging to this family happened to crow atmidnight, they would declare it was morning, although the watchman andall the clocks in the town were proclaiming the hour of twelve atnight.

　　the GREat poet Goethe concludes his Faust with the words, "maybe continued;" so might our wanderings in the churchyard be continued.I come here often, and if any of my friends, or those who are not myfriends, are too much for me, I go out and choose a plot of groundin which to bury him or her. then I bury them, as it were; therethey lie, dead and powerless, till they come back new and bettercharacters. their lives and their deeds, looked at after my ownfashion, I write down in my diary, as every one ought to do. then,if any of our friends act absurdly, no one need to be vexed aboutit. Let them bury the offenders out of sight, and keep their goodtemper. they can also read the Intelligencer, which is a paper writtenby the people, with their hands guided. When the time comes for thehistory of my life, to be bound by the grave, then they will writeupon it as my epitaph- "the man with a cheerful temper."

　　And this is my story.

　　the END