Riddle

“The grass grave in the village churchyard sinks down in a few years to the common level, and its place is no more to be found and so, to keep the remembrance of the departed a little longer in the world which they have left, we lay a stone over their graves, and inscribe upon it their name and age, and perhaps some few words of their virtues and of our own sorrow, and tho' the stone moulders and tho' the letters fade away, yet do they outlast the interest of what they record-we remember our dead always-but when we shall have joined them their memory may be said to have perished out of the earth, for no distinct idea of them remains behind, and the next generation soon forget they ever existed.”
― Caroline Austen: A Memoir of Jane Austen and Other Family Recollections