Letters to Lithopolis by O. Henry

Author:O. Henry [Henry, O.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781411454170
Publisher: Barnes & Noble
Published: 2017-02-21T00:00:00+00:00

In the course of my lively but brief correspondence with O. Henry, I learned to rely on the Tombstone Lady. Whenever Lithopolis seemed drained of incident and I found my pen lagging, I could always fall back upon Alta Jungkurth (she was muscular from her trade and could stand it). If your mind grasps at all the fact of a woman chiselling tombstones, you probably are picturing her as a middle-aged, frowsy-haired, masculine-appearing person, loud-voiced and assertive. Wipe out the picture—you will have to do it all over. Our Tombstone Lady was good-looking—yes, noticeably so—and soft-voiced, and at that time, I should say, full fifty years younger than the age at which according to Ecclesiastes she would have personal use for one of her own stones. She was tall, strong, and well-built, for her father had been a monumental man—so to speak. The music of the chisel (for the shop adjoined the home) had been her first lullaby, and stones—everlasting stones—tall, short, round, square, cuneiform, and oblong; white, gray, and granite-red—stones were her only toys. She had occasional pets, a cat for one, but he died. His name was Tom, and Alta gave vent to her grief by erecting a stone to his memory—it stands to this day in the yard:

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