t is as a thing of undertakers
and mourning-coaches, of mutes and palls, scarfs, sextons, and
grave-diggers, that he knows it--the horrid image of human woe and human
mockery, of grief walking in carnival. No wonder if it impress him with
a greater dread!

'What has all this sad digression to do with Frankfort, Mr. O'Leary?'
inquires some very impatient reader, who always will pull me short up
when I 'm in for a four-mile-heat of moralising. Come, then, I'll tell
you. The train of thought was suggested to me as I strolled along
the Boulevard to my hotel, meditating on one of the very strangest
institutions it had ever been my lot to visit in any country; and which,
stranger still, so far as I know, guidebook people have not mentioned in
any way.

In a cemetery of Frankfort--a very tasteful imitation of Pere la
Chaise--there stands a large building, handsomely built, and in very
correct Roman architecture, which is called the Recovery House--being
neither more nor less than an institution devoted to the dead, for the
purpose of giving them every favourable opportunity of returning to life
again should they feel so disposed. The apartments are furnished with
all the luxurious elegance of the best houses; the beds are decorated
with carving and inlaying, the carpets soft and noiseless to the tread;
and, in fact, few of those who live and breathe are surrounded by such
appliances of enjoyment. Beside each bed there stands a small table,
in which certain ivory keys are fixed, exactly resembling those of a
pianoforte. On these is the hand of the dead man laid as he lies in the
bed; for instead of being buried, he is conveyed here after his supposed
death, and wrapped up in warm blankets, while the temperature of the
room itself is regulated by the season of the year. The slightest
movement of vitality in his fingers would press down one of the keys,
which communicate with a bell at the top of the building, where resides
a doctor, or rather two doctors, who take it watch and watch
about, ready at the summons to afford all the succour of their art.
Restoratives of every kind abound--all that human ingenuity can
devise--in the way of cordials and stimulants, as well as a large and
admirably equipped staff of servants and nurses, whose cheerful aspect
seems especially intended to reassure the patient should he open his
eyes once more to life.

The institution is a most costly one. The physicians, selected from
among the highe