On the reverse side of the column appears an inscription even more pathetic and poetic, to yet another departed favorite, who seems, not like Tommy to have been gathered to his fathers ripe in years and honors but to have been cut down in the bloom of youth by some untimely and tragic fate.  He is all the more felin’ly lamented: 

      HIC JACET
        PUSSY
    SUI GENERIS
    PULCHERRIMUS. 
    OCCISUS EST
    MENSE APRILIS
      AETAT. 9.

* * * * *

“Vixi, et quum dederat cursum fortuna, peregi.  Felix! heu nimium felix! si litora ista nunquam tetigissem!”

* * * * *

Thanks to certain by no means homoeopathic doses of the Latin grammar in my early years, I was able to gather the meaning of these elegiac effusions, and when the last stanza embodying poor Pussy’s posthumous wail was discovered to be none other than the despairing death-cry of the “infelix Dido” as immortalized by Virgil—­the one step from the sublime to the ridiculous seemed to have been passed.

I looked at Nannette, and Nannette looked at me, and we burst into silent but irrepressible laughter.  Nannette was the first to recover herself.

“We ought to be ashamed of ourselves,” said she severely:  “Honest grief is always respectable; and a fitting tribute to departed worth, no more than what is due from the survivors.  I have no doubt but that Tommy and Pussy were most esteemed members of society, and that their loss has left an aching void in the family of which they were the youngest and most petted darlings.  I have heard the history of this monument, and the village that has grown up around it, and if you will comport yourself more as a Christian being should in the presence of a solemn memorial, I will relate to you the interesting facts in my possession.”

I immediately signified a due contrition and full purpose of amendment; when Nannette continued, still speaking with the gravity befitting the subject.

“This estate then, this large and respectable mansion, and these pleasant grounds in which we now sit, are the property in common of three most estimable ladies, all past their first youth, and all possessed of sufficient good sense and strength of mind to remain their own mistresses, which has procured for the very remarkable specimen of ingenuity now before us, from some ignorant townspeople, the sobriquet of the ‘Old Maid’s Village.’

“There is only one of the ladies, however, I am informed, who interests herself in the construction of these most ingenious toys.  Possessed of ample means, and more than ample leisure, she amuses herself in hours which might otherwise be devoted to gossip and tea, in putting together these various models of buildings, all differing in style, and of most singular materials.  The church, for instance, is built of fragments of clinker, gathered from stove and grate,