millions of children, has not quite
forgotten them! But now he was thinking of that other state, where, free
from all mortal impediments, the memory of his sorrowful burden
should be only as that of the case he has shed to the insect whose
"deep-damasked wings" beat off the golden dust of the lily-anthers, as
he flutters in the ecstasy of his new life over their full-blown summer
glories.

No human being can rest for any time in a state of equilibrium, where
the desire to live and that to depart just balance each other. If one
has a house, which he has lived and always means to live in, he pleases
himself with the thought of all the conveniences it offers him, and
thinks little of its wants and imperfections. But once having made up
his mind to move to a better, every incommodity starts out upon him,
until the very ground-plan of it seems to have changed in his mind,
and his thoughts and affections, each one of them packing up its little
bundle of circumstances, have quitted their several chambers and nooks
and migrated to the new home, long before its apartments are ready to
receive their coming tenant. It is so with the body. Most persons have
died before they expire,--died to all earthly longings, so that the
last breath is only, as it were, the locking of the door of the already
deserted mansion. The fact of the tranquillity with which the great
majority of dying persons await this locking of those gates of life
through which its airy angels have been going and coming, from the
moment of the first cry, is familiar to those who have been often
called upon to witness the last period of life. Almost always there is a
preparation made by Nature for unearthing a soul, just as on the smaller
scale there is for the removal of a milktooth. The roots which hold
human life to earth are absorbed before it is lifted from its place.
Some of the dying are weary and want rest, the idea of which is almost
inseparable in the universal mind from death. Some are in pain, and want
to be rid of it, even though the anodyne be dropped, as in the
legend, from the sword of the Death-Angel. Some are stupid, mercifully
narcotized that they may go to sleep without long tossing about. And
some are strong in faith and hope, so that, as they draw near the next
world, they would fair hurry toward it, as the caravan moves faster over
the sands when the foremost travellers send word along the file that
water is in sight. Though each little party th