nd it, for our
souls have much greater capabilities then we are inclined to
believe. Do we not, in our dreams, show a wonderful dramatic talent?
each of our acquaintance appears to us then in his own character,
and with his own voice; no man could thus imitate them in his waking
hours. How clearly, too, we are reminded of persons whom we have not
seen for many years; they start up suddenly to the mind's eye with all
their peculiarities as living realities. In fact, this memory of the
soul is a fearful thing; every sin, every sinful thought it can
bring back, and we may well ask how we are to give account of "every
idle word" that may have been whispered in the heart or uttered with
the lips. The spirit of the watchman therefore understood very well
the language of the inhabitants of the moon. They were disputing about
our earth, and doubted whether it could be inhabited. The
atmosphere, they asserted, must be too dense for any inhabitants of
the moon to exist there. They maintained that the moon alone was
inhabited, and was really the heavenly body in which the old world
people lived. They likewise talked politics.

But now we will descend to East Street, and see what happened to
the watchman's body. He sat lifeless on the steps. His staff had
fallen out of his hand, and his eyes stared at the moon, about which
his honest soul was wandering.

"What is it o'clock, watchman?" inquired a passenger. But there
was no answer from the watchman.

The man then pulled his nose gently, which caused him to lose
his balance. The body fell forward, and lay at full length on the
ground as one dead.

All his comrades were very much frightened, for he seemed quite
dead; still they allowed him to remain after they had given notice
of what had happened; and at dawn the body was carried to the
hospital. We might imagine it to be no jesting matter if the soul of
the man should chance to return to him, for most probably it would
seek for the body in East Street without being able to find it. We
might fancy the soul inquiring of the police, or at the address
office, or among the missing parcels, and then at length finding it at
the hospital. But we may comfort ourselves by the certainty that the
soul, when acting upon its own impulses, is wiser than we are; it is
the body that makes it stupid.

As we have said, the watchman's body had been taken to the
hospital, and here it was placed in a room to be washed. Naturally,
the first thing