any one doubts the fact, let him go to the funeral of a man who is not followed by any heavy-hearted relation or friend, and yet who is better a hundred-fold than the men who walk behind him. Through the mourners' regret may be detected a faint though certain under-current of self-complacency, as who should say, "Yes, there lies So-and-So, dead. He was a clever fellow. In life he made some stir; but his race is over, his day is done, his place in the world is empty, and he has no longer a voice in anything. He cannot avenge his injuries or punish the man who assails his memory; he is no longer to be flattered, feared, or regarded; he is simply—nil. Let us thank God that we are upstanding, cake-eating, wine-drinking, vigorous men, able to walk about the earth, speak our minds, have a voice in the world's affairs, and hold our own against anybody, instead of being reduced to a helpless log like that." These men never put their thoughts into words; they are, indeed, scarcely conscious of them, but they are there.
I wonder why I am thinking so regretfully to-day of those poor voiceless, eyeless dead people? I have my dead, it is true, though they are not lying under the grass, but deep down in my heart. God has not yet come to the names of any of my people or the few strangers that I love.
There is some one of whom I always think as dead, though I know that he is numbered among the living. Only by thinking of him thus can I keep the high wall standing between us from falling and crushing beneath it my hard-won, icy composure. If I ever thought of him as living, breathing, sleeping, laughing, sorrowing, I could not bear my lot: every common sight and sound and act would send my thoughts leaping towards him; and since I cannot forget, I will not think. I will not stand in a fair garden and, lifting my eyes, behold him—far away, indeed, but still like unto me; subject as I am to God's sun and rain and snow
