ening next day a rumor
reached us, afterwards confirmed, that a great part of the city of
Portland had burned, entailing a loss of nearly or quite twenty millions
of dollars.

But along with all these distracting incidents of the Fourth of July,
there was a bit of seriousness and worry that lingered in a back nook of
my mind, connected with that funeral which the Old Squire and I had
attended. I felt that there was something, some question concerning it,
which I must solve, or settle, before I could feel right again. I had
never seen a person lying dead before; I tried not to think about it and
in part succeeded, when there were a good many other things going on,
yet all the time I knew that it was there in my mind and must be thought
about before long. When I was very tired and first shut my eyes, on
lying down at night, I would see that man in his coffin so plainly that
I would fairly jump in bed, and then have to turn over several times
and begin talking with Halstead, somewhat to his annoyance, for without
quite understanding it, I suppose, he yet perceived that it was not a
genuine conversational effort.

During the days following the Fourth, this impression of death which had
entered my mind began to assume more definite limits, and grew pertinent
to my own status. I had heard that the average age of man was
thirty-three years, and granting that I should reach that age, I could
expect to live a little over twenty years more. That was a long time, to
be sure, twenty years; but it would pass, and at the end of it I should
have to die and look as that man looked, and be buried in the ground.
The thought of it caused me to gasp suddenly, and filled me with a sense
of terror and despair so awful that I could scarcely restrain myself
from crying out. Most young people, I conjecture, pass through a similar
mental experience, when the drear fact of death is first realized.

It continued to weigh heavily on my mind; and by way of relief from it,
I followed Theodora out into the garden the next Sunday evening, and
after quite an effort, opened the subject with her. There was no one
else with whom I could have summoned resolution to broach that topic.

"Did you ever see anybody after they were dead?" I asked her.

She did not seem very much surprised at the question, since it was
Sabbath eve. "Do you mean their body?" she inquired.

"Yes, their body," I replied.

"I have seen three," she said, at length.

"Didn't it