tool may become a litter in the land of eternity, and rise up then as
a throne, gleaming like gold and blooming as an arbor. He who always
lounged about, and drank the spiced draught of pleasure, that he might
forget the wild things he had done here, will have his barrel given to
him on the journey, and will have to drink from it as they go on;
and the drink is bright and clear, so that the thoughts remain pure,
and all good and noble feelings are awakened, and he sees and feels
what in life he could not or would not see; and then he has within him
the punishment, the gnawing worm, which will not die through time
incalculable. If on the glasses there stood written 'oblivion,' on the
barrel 'remembrance' is inscribed.

"When I read a good book, an historical work, I always think at
last of the poetry of what I am reading, and of the omnibus of
death, and wonder, which of the hero's deeds Death took out of the
savings bank for him, and what provisions he got on the journey into
eternity. There was once a French king--I have forgotten his name, for
the names of good people are sometimes forgotten, even by me, but it
will come back some day;--there was a king who, during a famine,
became the benefactor of his people; and the people raised up to his
memory a monument of snow, with the inscription, 'Quicker than this
melts didst thou bring help!' I fancy that Death, looking back upon
the monument, gave him a single snow-flake as provision, a
snow-flake that never melts, and this flake floated over his royal
head, like a white butterfly, into the land of eternity. Thus, too,
there was Louis XI. I have remembered his name, for one remembers what
is bad--a trait of him often comes into my thoughts, and I wish one
could say the story is not true. He had his lord high constable
executed, and he could execute him, right or wrong; but he had the
innocent children of the constable, one seven and the other eight
years old, placed under the scaffold so that the warm blood of their
father spurted over them, and then he had them sent to the Bastille,
and shut up in iron cages, where not even a coverlet was given them to
protect them from the cold. And King Louis sent the executioner to
them every week, and had a tooth pulled out of the head of each,
that they might not be too comfortable; and the elder of the boys
said, 'My mother would die of grief if she knew that my younger
brother had to suffer so cruelly; therefore pull out two of m