From A Book of Country Things by Barrows Mussey as told by Walter Needham:

 

 

When my helper on John Gale's roof talked about tombstones, he wasn't being so foolish as maybe he thought. I suppose you might call it the last use a man would ever have for slate; anyway, there's some beautiful tombstones made out of Guilford slate.

 

On the road from Algiers to Guilford Center, just opposite the Creamery Bridge (before you get to Brandy Bridge, which is named from the keg they used to encourage the workmen with when they was building the original wooden bridge), you'll find a high bank that's just covered thick with wild strawberries in the spring. There's a sort of scar going slantways up the bank, and that's what's left of the burial road to the Old North Cemetery in Guilford.

 

I go up there once in a while and look things over. There's a few Civil War veterans in the new part, over near the big maple, but I should guess there was more from the Revolution. Some of the oldest stones is like the ones you see in the old Boston burying grounds, with those jack-o'-lantern cherubs that have wings for ears, and "Here lyes" is spelled with a y.

 

I guess I must be kind of unreligious, like Gramp, because I pulled up some of the tombstones to set them straighter, and I found out stoneworking hasn't changed much. One stone, not the regular Guilford slate but more of a marble, was shaped kind of fancy on top, with a big semi-circle sticking out and two little ears, like. When I pulled it up I found the fellow had originally worked the other end, and something went wrong, so he just turned the stone around and started over.

 

But the ones I always notice more than any is nice clean Guilford slate, older than the fancy one but not weathered so much as the ones with the jack-o'lanterns, and evidently all cut by the same fellow around 1815 or 1820. You can recognize his hand.

 

I know he was proud of his work for two reasons. One thing, when I pulled up some of his stones I found that down below the ground level he'd cut his guildmark. His stones had some real nice designs, and his lettering was good, but he couldn't spell worth a cent.

 

The other way I know for sure this fellow took pride in his art is that he wouldn't throwaway a nice stone with borders and designs on it just for a few misspelled words. If he merely put the wrong letter in the deceased's name, for instance, he'd just carve a different letter above it.

 

When he struck a tough word like February, and carved it Febary, and decided that was wrong, he just put a caret mark after the b, and a nice neat u above the line, and he was satisfied.

 

I copied off one of this fellow's inscriptions:

 

The youth is gone

His sole is fled

His body is num

bered with the dead.

His bounds is sot

He can not pas

There is not a sand left in his glas.