hat a
privilege to be allowed to take such a part in our great struggle! I
cannot write about it, nor anything else, as I want to. I don't know why
it is, but I have a strange reluctance to touch my pen. I see that the
death of Miss Catherine Beecher is announced. There were fine things
about her. What must she not have suffered, of late years! But I am
disposed to say of the release of every aged person, "Euthanasia."

6th. I will finish this and get it off to you before Sunday. You have
a great deal to do before vacation. Let me enjoin it upon you to have a
vacation when the [345] time comes. Don't spend your strength and life
too fast. Live to educate those fine boys. Thank you for sending us
their picture. See what Furness does. That article on Immortality is as
good as anything he ever wrote. Did you read the paper on the Radiometer
in the last "Popular Science"? What a (not world merely) but universe do
we live in! I am not willing to go out of the world without knowing all
I can know of these wonders that fill alike the heavens above and every
inch of space beneath. What a glorious future will it be, if we may
spend uncounted years in the study of them! And, notwithstanding the
weight of matter-of-fact that seems to lie against it, I think my hope
of it increases. This blessed sense of what it is to be,--this sweetness
of existence,-why should it be given us to be lost forever?

To the Same.

ST. DAVID'S, June 16, 1878.

. . . ONE point in your letter strikes very deep into my
experience,--that in which you speak of my "standing so long upon
the verge." To stand as I do, within easy reach of such stupendous
possibilities,--that of being translated to another sphere of existence,
or of being cut off from existence altogether and forever,--does
indeed fill me with awe, and make me wonder that I am not depressed or
overwhelmed by it. Habit is a stream which flows on the same, no matter
how the scenery changes. It seems as if routine wore away the very sense
of the words we use. We speak often of immortality; the word slides
easily over our lips; but do we consider what it means? Do you ever
ask yourself whether, after having lived a hundred thousands or [346]
millions of years, you could still desire to go on for millions
more?--whether a limited, conscious existence could bear it?

I read the foregoing, and said, "I don't see any need of considering
matters so entirely out of our reach;" but the question is, c