life
prolonged far beyond the average limit: it is sorrowful; it is
pitiful; it has no attractions.

This world is only a schoolroom for the larger life of the next. Some
leave it early, and some late: some linger long after they seem to
have learned all its lessons. This world is no heaven: its pleasures
do not last even through our little lifetimes.

There are many fables of endless life, which in all ages have caught
the attention of men; we are familiar with the stories of the old
patriarchs who lived their hundreds of years: but one thinks of them
wearily, and without envy.

-----

When I was a child, it was necessary that my father and mother should
take a long sea-voyage. I never had been separated from them before;
but at this time they thought it best to leave me behind, as I was not
strong, and the life on board ship did not suit me. When I was told of
this decision, I was very sorry, and at once thought I should be
miserable without my mother; besides, I pitied myself exceedingly for
losing the sights I had hoped to see in the country which they were to
visit. I had an uncontrollable dislike to being sent to school, having
in some way been frightened by a maid of my mother's, who had put many
ideas and aversions into my head which I was many years in outgrowing.
Having dreaded this possibility, it was a great relief to know that I
was not to be sent to school at all, but to be put under the charge of
two elderly cousins of my father,--a gentleman and his wife whom I had
once seen, and liked dearly. I knew that their home was at a fine
old-fashioned country-place, far from town, and close beside a river,
and I was pleased with this prospect, and at once began to make
charming plans for the new life.

I had lived always with grown people, and seldom had had any thing to
do with children. I was very small for my age, and a strange mixture
of childishness and maturity; and, having the appearance of being
absorbed in my own affairs, no one ever noticed me much, or seemed to
think it better that I should not listen to the conversation. In spite
of considerable curiosity, I followed an instinct which directed me
never to ask questions at these times: so I often heard stray
sentences which puzzled me, and which really would have been made
simple and commonplace at once, if I had only asked their meaning. I
was, for the most of the time, in a world of my own. I had a great
deal of imagination, and was always t