n stories telling how he piques himself on crowded cemeteries. But
I will rather tell of the old grave-digger of Monkton, to whose
unsuffering bedside the minister was summoned. He dwelt in a cottage
built into the wall of the churchyard; and through a bull's-eye pane
above his bed he could see, as he lay dying, the rank grasses and the
upright and recumbent stones. Dr. Laurie was, I think, a Moderate; 'tis
certain, at least, that he took a very Roman view of death-bed
dispositions; for he told the old man that he had lived beyond man's
natural years, that his life had been easy and reputable, that his
family had all grown up and been a credit to his care, and that it now
behoved him unregretfully to gird his loins and follow the majority. The
grave-digger heard him out; then he raised himself up on one elbow, and
with the other hand pointed through the window to the scene of his
lifelong labours. "Doctor," he said, "I hae laid three hunner and
fower-score in that kirkyaird; an it had been His wull," indicating
Heaven, "I would hae likit weel to hae made out the fower hunner." But
it was not to be; this tragedian of the fifth act had now another part
to play; and the time had come when others were to gird and carry him.

II

I would fain strike a note that should be more heroical; but the ground
of all youth's suffering, solitude, hysteria, and haunting of the grave,
is nothing else than naked, ignorant selfishness. It is himself that he
sees dead; those are his virtues that are forgotten; his is the vague
epitaph. Pity him but the more, if pity be your cue; for where a man is
all pride, vanity, and personal aspiration, he goes through fire
unshielded. In every part and corner of our life, to lose oneself is to
be gainer; to forget oneself is to be happy; and this poor, laughable,
and tragic fool has not yet learned the rudiments; himself, giant
Prometheus, is still ironed on the peaks of Caucasus. But by and by his
truant interests will leave that tortured body, slip abroad, and gather
flowers. Then shall death appear before him in an altered guise; no
longer as a doom peculiar to himself, whether fate's crowning injustice
or his own last vengeance upon those who fail to value him; but now as a
power that wounds him far more tenderly, not without solemn
compensations, taking and giving, bereaving and yet storing up.

The first step for all is to learn to the dregs our own ignoble
fallibility. When we have fallen