out 1550 of our era. It was to an
old lady, who must have been very loveable if the sweet smiling face of
her recumbent figure was as faithful to the original as its strongly
marked individuality suggested. I need not give the earlier part of her
epitaph, which was conventional enough, but my father was so struck with
the concluding lines, that he copied them into the note-book which he
always carried in his pocket. They ran:-

I fall asleep in the full and certain hope
That my slumber shall not be broken;
And that though I be all-forgetting,
Yet shall I not be all-forgotten,
But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds
Of those I loved,
Into which, while the power to strive was yet vouchsafed me,
I fondly strove to enter.

My father deplored his inability to do justice to the subtle tenderness
of the original, but the above was the nearest he could get to it.

How different this from the opinions concerning a future state which he
had tried to set before the Erewhonians some twenty years earlier. It
all came back to him, as the storks had done, now that he was again in an
Erewhonian environment, and he particularly remembered how one youth had
inveighed against our European notions of heaven and hell with a
contemptuous flippancy that nothing but youth and ignorance could even
palliate.

"Sir," he had said to my father, "your heaven will not attract me unless
I can take my clothes and my luggage. Yes; and I must lose my luggage
and find it again. On arriving, I must be told that it has unfortunately
been taken to a wrong circle, and that there may be some difficulty in
recovering it--or it shall have been sent up to mansion number five
hundred thousand millions nine hundred thousand forty six thousand eight
hundred and eleven, whereas it should have gone to four hundred thousand
millions, &c., &c.; and am I sure that I addressed it rightly? Then,
when I am just getting cross enough to run some risk of being turned out,
the luggage shall make its appearance, hat-box, umbrella, rug,
golf-sticks, bicycle, and everything else all quite correct, and in my
delight I shall tip the angel double and realise that I am enjoying
myself.

"Or I must have asked what I could have for breakfast, and be told I
could have boiled eggs, or eggs and bacon, or filleted plaice. 'Filleted
plaice,' I shall exclaim, 'no! not that. Have you any red mullets?' And
the angel will say, 'Why no, sir, the