Nineteenth-century graffiti discovered by workers renovating the Washington Monument have quite a different tone from those usually found today on the sides of buildings and subway cars.

"Whoever is the human instrument under God in the conversion of one soul, erects a monument to his own memory more lofty and enduing than this," reads the slightly misspelled inscription, which can now be viewed by visitors to the monument.

It is signed B. F. B. No one knows who that is, or who left the small drawings and 19th-century dates on other walls. But Park Service historians have decided to save the scribblings.

The markings in the lobby of the monument were covered when it was decorated at the turn of the century. They were found when workers removed marble wainscoting as part of a yearlong, $500,000 renovation that was just completed.