nded for the habitation
of man: it belongs exclusively to the wild beasts and the fowls of the
air, and you have no business here. [Manifest signs of disapprobation
on part of Deacon Taylor, an extensive owner of town-lots.] And if you
persist in remaining here, what moral right have you to complain of
God?...

"Remember, then, in conclusion, that, for millions of years before our
race existed, mosquitoes, weeds, briers, thorns, thistles, snow-storms,
and northeast winds prevailed upon this planet, and that during all this
time it was pronounced by the Deity himself to be '_very good_.' If,
then, the earth appears to be evil, is it not because 'thine eye is
evil'? We share this world, my friends, with other races, whose wants
are different from ours; and we are all of equal importance in the eyes
of our Maker, who distributes to each its share of blessings--man and
monster both alike--with impartial favor. Is not thus the fallacy of the
corruption of Nature exposed, and the lie against our Creator's wisdom,
love, and goodness dragged into noonday light?"

* * * * *

But it is time to recommence our rambles through the City of the Dead.

Right here I come across on a tombstone,--"All our children. Emma, aged
1 mo. 23 days. John, 3 years 5 days. Anna, aged 1 year 1 mo." As a
physiologist, I might make some very instructive comments upon this; but
I forbear.

And here, upon another, a few rods farther on, is an epitaph in verse:--

(FIRST VERSE.)

"Calm be her slumbers near kindred are sighing,
A husband deplores in deep anguish of heart,
Beneath the cold earth _unconsciously lying_,
No murmur can reach her, no tempest can start."

(SECOND VERSE.)

"Calm be her sleep as the silence of even
When hearts unto deep invocation give birth.
With a prayer she has _knelt at the portal of heaven_
And found the admission she hoped for on earth_."

Not to speak of the "poetry" just here, how charmingly consistent with
each other are the ideas contained in the passages I have italicized! In
the first verse, you observe, the inmate is sleeping unconscious beneath
the ground: in the second verse, she has ascended to heaven and
found admittance to mansions in the skies!--A similar confusion and
contradiction of ideas occur in most of the epitaphs I see. Does our
theology furnish us with no clear conception of the state of the soul
after death? The Catholic Church teaches tha