which was put up by Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, who has
left it in print that this "fair black marble stone" cost him 6 pounds
4_s_. 6_d_. When I was a youth, and used to pore in the old Franklin
Library of Philadelphia over Lilly, I never thought that his grave would
be so near my home. But a far greater literary favorite of mine lies
buried in the church-yard without. This is Dr. Maginn, the author of
"Father Tom and the Pope," and many another racy, subtle jest. A fellow
of infinite humor,--the truest disciple of Rabelais,--and here he lies
without a monument!

Summon the sexton, and let us ask him to show us the scold's, or
gossip's, bridle. This is a rare curiosity, which is kept in the vestry.
It would seem, from all that can be learned, that two hundred years ago
there were in England viragoes so virulent, women so gifted with gab and
so loaded and primed with the devil's own gunpowder, that all moral
suasion was wasted on them, and simply showed, as old Reisersberg wrote,
that _fatue agit qui ignem conatur extinguere sulphure_ ('t is all
nonsense to try to quench fire with brimstone). For such diavolas they
had made--what the sexton is just going to show you--a muzzle of thin
iron bars, which pass around the head and are padlocked behind. In front
a flat piece of iron enters the mouth and keeps down the tongue. On it
is the date 1633, and certain lines, no longer legible:--

"Chester presents Walton with a bridle,
To curb women's tongues that talk too idle."

A sad story, if we only knew it all! What tradition tells is that long
ago there was a Master Chester, who lost a fine estate through the idle,
malicious clack of a gossiping, lying woman. "What is good for a
bootless bene?" What he did was to endow the church with this admirable
piece of head-gear. And when any woman in the parish was unanimously
adjudged to be deserving of the honor, the bridle was put on her head and
tongue, and she was led about town by the beadle as an example to all the
scolding sisterhood. Truly, if it could only be applied to the women and
men who repeat gossip, rumors reports, _on dits_, small slanders, proved
or unproved, to all gobe-mouches, club-gabblers, tea-talkers and
tattlers, chatterers, church-twaddlers, wonderers
if-it-be-true-what-they-say; in fine, to the entire sister and brother
hood of tongue-waggers, I for one would subscribe my mite to have one
kept in every church in the world, to be zeal