d converted them into English:

I heard a poor man in the grave-yard cry:
"Arise, oh friend! a little hour assume
My weight of cares, whilst I,
Long weary, learn thy respite in the tomb."
I listened that the corpse should make reply;
Who, knowing sweeter death than penury,
Broke not his silent doom.

I am reminded of that joke, rather grim forsooth, which Lowell thought the
best ever made. It is in _The Frogs_ of Aristophanes. The god Dionysus and
his slave Xanthias are travelling the road to Hades, the slave as a matter
of course carrying the pack for the two. They meet a procession bearing a
corpse to the tomb. Xanthias begs the dead man to take the pack with him
as he is borne so comfortably on the same road to the nether world.
Whereupon they dicker over the portage. "Two shillings for the job," says
the corpse, sitting up on his bier. "Too much," says Xanthias. "Two
shillings," insists the corpse. "One and sixpence," cries Xanthias. "_I'd
see myself alive first_!" says the corpse, sinking down on the bier.

LV

JACK TO PHILIP

DEAR MR. TOWERS:

The young lady have the letter you wrote me and I cant get it. But you
needent bother about writing any more tales. I guess you done the best you
could, but we dont neither one like what you told about the witch and them
young people in the forest. Why do the knight stand there fighting the
witch when the old man have run off with his girl? Why dont he take out
after them and leave the witch to bleed to death? And the young lady
thinks of it worse than I do. She went on awful when she read it, and
cried. I guess she was sorry about the way the knight kept on cutting off
that woman's legs and arms even if she was bad. She don't say nothing else
nice about you now, nor let me. But she says you are the crewelest man she
have known. And she cries a heap when there aint nothing the matter, and
blames at every thing. The old gentleman feels bad about it but he dont
know what to do. I guess now he wishes he hadent fooled with the young
lady's salvation none. Because she have told him one day when he was
trying to talk pious at her, not to say nothing, that she dident believe
in nothing now but damnation. And he say "Dont talk that way before the
child." But I aint come to neither one of them things yet.

Your trew Frend,