Chippings with a Chisel (From "Twice Told Tales")

In Short

This observational narrative centers on a brief sojourn at Edgartown, where the narrator befriends an elderly, singular stonecutter named Mr. Wigglesworth. As the sculptor labors to transform slabs of slate and marble into memorials for the island’s departed, a parade of mourners and misfits passes through his shop. Through these encounters, the story explores the vanity, grief, and surprising attachments that draw people to the grave. It remains a poignant, quiet examination of how human beings attempt to tether themselves to the past through physical markers of their own mortality.

The Story

The narrative begins with the narrator’s arrival on Martha’s Vineyard, a place where the ocean’s health and the isolation of the islanders create a unique relationship with death. He meets Mr. Wigglesworth, a man who has devoted his life to "labeling" the dead, and spends his summer days in the dusty, quiet workshop observing the intersection of business and bereavement. The shop becomes a stage for an array of human conditions, each customer reflecting a different facet of how survivors handle the weight of loss.

We meet an elderly woman who, after forty years, commissions a monument for a long-lost lover; a "gray polygamist" who callously orders stones for his three former wives in a single transaction; and a whaling captain who pre-pays for a shared slab to be split between himself and his long-dead spouse. These visits allow the narrator and the sculptor to contemplate the nature of devotion and the often-misguided ways the living seek comfort. Some scenes carry a touch of the macabre, such as when a woman orders a monument for her husband, only for him to return home alive, forcing the sculptor to rue the waste of his finest piece of marble.

The shop also hosts the tragic and the bizarre. A young, pale girl selects her own tombstone shortly before her death, while a bitter man orders a memorial for an enemy, hoping to be buried beside him—a testament to how hatred can bind souls as firmly as love. As the season turns, the narrator finds himself increasingly at odds with his companion. He begins to view the practice of grave-marking as a "mistaken system," arguing that such monuments imprison the spirit rather than honor it. He suggests that the living should look toward the "freedom of the skies" rather than the "dungeon-like" earth. Mr. Wigglesworth, whose life’s work depends on the necessity of these markers, finds this philosophy "heathenish" and distressing.

The story concludes not with a resolution of this philosophical divide, but with a deeper, shared understanding. The narrator leaves the island having gained wisdom, though it is a wisdom tinged with doubt. He finds himself wrestling with the unsettling idea that human sorrow and regret may contain as much genuine comfort as the joys of life, leaving him to wonder if the shadows cast by our attachments are, in the end, what define our existence.

How It Unfolds

The island setting The narrator introduces the quiet, primitive spirit of Martha’s Vineyard, where the inhabitants cherish their dead even when nature denies the local carver a steady stream of business. He establishes the atmosphere of the ancient Edgartown burial ground, where old, ornate markers contrast with the rough, hand-hewn stones of the islanders.

The artisan at work The focus shifts to Mr. Wigglesworth, a simple, cheerful man who views his life’s purpose as preparing the world for the resurrection by naming its inhabitants. The shop is presented as a sanctuary of labor, where the rhythmic strike of the chisel serves as a backdrop for the narrator’s philosophical observations.

A parade of mourners A series of visitors arrives, each presenting a different, often contradictory, relationship with death. From the woman mourning a forty-year-old loss to the husband indifferent to his series of deceased wives, the narrative moves through these vignettes to categorize the varied emotional responses of the living.

The clash of philosophies The friendship is tested when the narrator explicitly challenges the value of tombstones, calling them symbols of a failed spiritual understanding. This confrontation highlights the gap between the practical, tangible reality of the stonecutter and the abstract, visionary idealism of the observer.

The concluding reflection The narrative moves toward a quiet close as the narrator grapples with the ambiguity of his own observations. He acknowledges that the time spent in the shop has left him more perceptive of the human heart, yet burdened by the realization that grief is a fundamental, perhaps even necessary, part of the human experience.

The People

Mr. Wigglesworth is the anchor of the story—a man of "simplicity and singleness" who inhabits his narrow profession with the earnestness of a child. He is neither morbid nor cynical, but rather finds a genuine, rhythmic joy in his work, viewing his chiseling as a sacred duty. His pride in his craftsmanship is countered only by his inability to understand the narrator’s "heathenish" rejection of his trade.

The narrator serves as our witness and provocateur. He is a man of intellectual curiosity who finds himself drawn to the burial ground not out of morbidity, but out of a desire to understand the "record on the hearts" of the survivors. He is an outsider whose perspective evolves from detached observation to a challenging, uncomfortable engagement with the nature of grief.

The customers are the story’s changing, colorful chorus. The elderly woman seeking a memorial for her long-lost love represents the "ideality" that grief can bestow upon a soul, keeping it pure and elevated. In stark contrast, the "gray polygamist" represents the loss of individual sanctity, while the young, pale girl who selects her own stone provides a moment of haunting, quiet grace that humbles the narrator. Each figure is a brief portrait of a human soul attempting to reconcile the presence of the past with the demands of the present.

In Its Own Voice

"The secluded life, and the simple and primitive spirit which still characterizes the inhabitants of those islands, especially of Martha’s Vineyard, insure their dead friends a longer and dearer remembrance than the daily novelty and revolving bustle of the world can elsewhere afford to beings of the past."

The narrator sets the scene by contrasting the island's slow, deliberate pace of mourning with the restless, forgetting nature of the outside world.

"I shuddered at the gray polygamist, who had so utterly lost the holy sense of individuality in wedlock, that methought he was fain to reckon upon his fingers how many women, who had once slept by his side, were now sleeping in their graves."

The narrator reflects on the callousness of a visitor who treats the ordering of memorials for his three late wives as a mundane, bulk-purchase errand.

"The weight of these heavy marbles, though unfelt by the dead corpse of the enfranchised soul, presses drearily upon the spirit of the survivor, and causes him to connect the idea of death with the dungeon-like imprisonment of the tomb, instead of with the freedom of the skies."

The narrator challenges his friend the sculptor by arguing that the physical act of marking a grave actually hinders the spiritual liberation of both the living and the dead.

What It's Really About

The work grapples with the tension between the physical permanence of objects and the ephemeral nature of human affection. It questions whether we mourn the dead or merely our own attachments to them. By placing these questions within the context of a tombstone carver’s shop, the story suggests that our monuments—be they poems, epitaphs, or marble slabs—are more for the living than the departed. It explores the idea that grief is not a static state, but a dynamic, sometimes contradictory force that can elevate a person’s character or, in the case of the miser and the bitter enemy, confine it to a narrow, desolate space. Ultimately, it asks if we are capable of remembering the dead without shackling them to the earth.

Why Read It Today

Readers who appreciate slow, thoughtful prose and the quiet observation of human nature will find much to admire here. It is a work that rewards patience, moving through its vignettes with the steady, rhythmic pace of a chisel striking stone. Those who enjoy historical pieces that examine the "Puritan" or early American mindset will find the details of Vineyard life and the sculptor’s character particularly resonant.

However, the reader should be prepared for the mid-19th-century prose style, which is formal, occasionally ornamental, and steeped in a brand of sentimentality that can feel detached from modern sensibilities. The narrator’s philosophical musings—while rich—can occasionally veer into the didactic, and his critique of the sculptor’s trade may strike some as overly intellectualized or even unfeeling toward the universal need for ritual. Yet, for anyone who has ever stood in a cemetery and wondered about the lives behind the names, this story offers a profound, if slightly melancholic, companion. It stays with you because it captures the specific, haunting realization that our memorials are often just "scraps of poetry" that we use to "stretch to suit a great grief, and shrink to fit a small one."