ourney: there is
certainly a talk about one who was not allowed to go--they call him
the Wandering Jew: he has to ride behind the omnibus. If he had been
allowed to get in, he would have escaped the clutches of the poets.

"Just cast your mind's eye into that great omnibus. The society is
mixed, for king and beggar, genius and idiot, sit side by side: they
must go without their property and money; they have only the
service-book and the gift out of the saving's bank with them. But
which of our deeds is selected and given to us? Perhaps quite a little
one, one that we have forgotten, but which has been recorded--small as
a pea, but the pea can send out a blooming shoot. The poor bumpkin,
who sat on a low stool in the corner, and was jeered at and flouted,
will perhaps have his worn-out stool given him as a provision; and the
stool may become a litter in the land of eternity, and rise up then as
a throne, gleaming like gold, and blooming as an arbour. He who always
lounged about, and drank the spiced draught of pleasure, that he might
forget the wild things he had done here, will have his barrel given to
him on the journey, and will have to drink from it as they go on; and
the drink is bright and clear, so that the thoughts remain pure, and
all good and noble feelings are awakened, and he sees and feels what
in life he could not or would not see; and then he has within him the
punishment, the _gnawing worm_, which will not die through time
incalculable. If on the glasses there stood written '_oblivion_,' on
the barrel '_remembrance_' is inscribed.

"When I read a good book, an historical work, I always think at last
of the poetry of what I am reading, and of the omnibus of death, and
wonder which of the hero's deeds Death took out of the savings bank
for him, and what provisions he got on the journey into eternity.
There was once a French king--I have forgotten his name, for the names
of good people are sometimes forgotten, even by me, but it will come
back some day; there was a king who, during a famine, became the
benefactor of his people; and the people raised to his memory a
monument of snow, with the inscription, 'Quicker than this melts didst
thou bring help!' I fancy that Death, looking back upon the monument,
gave him a single snow-flake as provision, a snow-flake that never
melts, and this flake floated over his royal head, like a white
butterfly, into the land of eternity. Thus too, there was a Louis
XI.--I ha