Copying Book: Secretary's Letters, 1860 (page 350)

350

I found the tree & stone fallen as stated
by Capt Winsor. The Stone is in Gothic style,
surmounted by a cross, had stood on a base made
tapering upwards to the height of 15 or 16 inches, ter-
minating in an oblong socket of about 2 inches in depth,
[to receive?] the bottom of the tablet. The tablet is say
2 or 3 inches thick, four feet three inches high and
two feet wide, and differs but little from an or-
dinary grave stone in the surface which it presents
and its capacity -- for resisting a strong wind: excepting
that its [single?] position on the base rendered it more
liable to be blown down.

The Stone appeard to have fallen nearly clean
from the bottom of the socket, and in its fall to have
broken in two in the middle. A portion of the stone
however was left in the socket, which I took out with
my fingers and have brought along & send you,
to let you see the nature of the stone as to the strength
of materials. I think you will perceive that
Capt Winsor did not overstate the matter, when
he said that a weaker or meaner stand he never
saw wrought into a monument.

Mr Folsom's informants should state his
means of knowledge, when he says that the "workman
at Mount Auburn have broken and infused the
monument". So far as I can learn, this
statement was made from an inference
that no work was going on last summer