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plores him to "come back." "Come back," he says, "before I am grown into a very old man, so as you shall hardly know me. Come before Bridget walks on crutches.

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Girls whom you left children have become Girls become sage matrons while you are tarrying there. trons. The blooming Miss W- -r (you remember Sally W) called upon us yesterday, an aged crone. Folks, whom you knew, die off every year. Formerly, I thought that death was wearing out, I stood ramparted about with so many healthy friends. The departure of J. W., two springs back, corrected my delusion. Since then the old divorcer has been busy. If you do not make haste to return there will be little left to greet you, of me, or mine." John Kenyon, writing a note of sympathy to Crabb Robinson, on occasion of the death of his grand-nephew, said, "Only live on, and this once smiling world is changed into a huge cemetery, in which we ourselves hardly care to linger." There is a Turkish tale to the effect that when A Turkish Solomon was ruling on earth, the angel Gabriel was sent to him one day with a goblet filled with the water of life, and bearing from on high the message that, if he chose, he might drink of the water and

tale.

become immortal. Calling together all his wisest counselors, he asked their advice. They, with one consent, advised him to drink and live forever. Then he summoned the birds of the air and the beasts of the field, and all of them gave the same advice, with one solitary exception. The hedge. This was the hedgehog. Approaching the hog's advice to Solomon. throne, and bending its brow to the ground, thus did it speak: "If this water may be shared by thee with thy kith and kin, then drink and enjoy the bliss of living. But if it is intended for thee alone, then do not drink. For sad would it be for thee to live on, but to see thy kinsmen and friends. one after the other disappear." "True are thy words, O hedgehog!" replied Solomon. "To me alone has the water of life been sent. As thou hast counseled so will I decide." And the water of life did he

and Pluto.

not drink.

You remember the touching dialogue in Protesilaus Lucian, between Protesilaus and Pluto: "O Pluto! our great lord and master, the Jupiter of these regions of the dead, and thou, daughter of Ceres, despise not a lover's prayer?" "What would you ask of us, friend, and who are you?" said Pluto. "I am Protesilaus, the Phylacian, son of

Iphiclus, an ally of the Grecians, and was

return back.

the first man slain at Troy: my desire is, Desired to that I may return back, and live a little longer." "That is a desire, Protesilaus, which all the dead have; but which was never granted to any." "It is not," said Protesilaus, "for the sake of living, but on account of my wife, whom I had just married, and left in her bridal-bed, when I set out on my voyage, and, unfortunately, the moment I landed, was slain by Hector: the love of her makes me very unhappy ; all I wish for is but to see her for a short time, and return to you again." "Have not you drank the waters of Lethe?" asked Pluto. "I have," answered Protesilaus, "but to no purpose; this thought is still afflicting."

Johnson's tender affection for his departed wife, of which there are many evidences in his Prayers and Meditations, appears very feelingly in this passage from his diary kept while he was in Paris: "The sight of palaces and other great buildings leaves no very distinct images, unless to those who talk of them. As I entered the Palais Bourbon, my wife was in my mind; she would have been pleased. Having now nobody to please, I am little pleased." The old gentleman in Gil Blas,

The waters sufficient.

of Lethe in

mous pic

ture.

it is observed, who complained that the peaches were not as fine as they appeared to be when he was young, had more reason than appears on the face of it. He missed not only his former palate, but the places he ate them in, and those who ate them with him. When Wilkie was in the EscuTitian's fa- rial, looking at Titian's famous picture of the Last Supper, in the refectory there, an old man said to him, "I have sat daily in sight of that picture for more than threescore years, during that time my companions have dropped off, one after another, all who were my seniors, all who were my contemporaries, and many, or most of those. who were younger than myself; more than one generation has passed away, and these the figures in the picture have remained unchanged. I look at them till I sometimes think that they are the realities, and we but the shadows."

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"At the age of seventy-five," said Goethe, one must of course think frequently of death. But this thought never gives me the least uneasiness, I am so The soul in fully convinced that the soul is indestructible, and that its activity will continue through eternity. It is like the sun, which seems to our earthly eyes to set in night,

destructible.

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While waiting at the station at Uttox- OBLIVION. eter, before his departure, Hawthorne

asked a boy who stood near him
- an in-
telligent and gentlemanly lad, twelve or
thirteen years old, whom he took to be a
clergyman's son- if he had ever heard
the story of Dr. Johnson, how he stood an
hour doing penance near that church, the
spire of which rose before them. The
boy stared and answered, "No!" "Were
you born at Uttoxeter?" "Yes."
"Yes." He
was asked if no circumstance such as had
been mentioned was known or talked about

little town.

among the inhabitants. "No," said the boy; "not that I ever heard of." "Just think," reflects the great novelist, "of the absurd little town, knowing nothing of the The absurd only memorable incident which ever happened within its boundaries since the old Britons built it, this sad and lovely story, which consecrates the spot (for I found it holy to my contemplation, again, as soon

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