in that shape which will not be
worth a farthing to you a thousandth part of a second after you are
dead. "Oh," you say, "it will help to bury me, anyhow." Oh, my
brother! you need not worry about that. The world will bury you soon
enough, from sanitary considerations. After you have been deceased for
three or four days you will compel the world to bury you.

Post-mortem emoluments are of no use to you. The treasures of this
world will not pass current in the future world; and if all the wealth
of the Bank of England were put in the pocket of your shroud, and you
in the midst of the Jordan of death were asked to pay three cents for
your ferriage, you could not do it. There comes a moment in your
existence beyond which all earthly values fail; and many a man has
wakened up in such a time to find that he has sold out for eternity,
and has nothing to show for it. I should as soon think of going to
Chatham Street to buy silk pocket-handkerchiefs with no cotton in
them, as to go to this world expecting to find any permanent
happiness. It has deceived and deluded every man that has ever put his
trust in it.

History tells us of one who resolved that he would have all his senses
gratified at one and the same time, and he expended thousands of
dollars on each sense. He entered a room, and there were the first
musicians of the land pleasing his ear, and there were fine pictures
fascinating his eye, and there were costly aromatics regaling his
nostril, and there were the richest meats, and wines, and fruits, and
confections pleasing the appetite, and there was a soft couch of
sinful indulgence on which he reclined; and the man declared afterward
that he would give ten times what he had given if he could have one
week of such enjoyment, even though he lost his soul by it. Ah! that
was the rub. He did lose his soul by it! Cyrus the Conqueror thought
for a little while that he was making a fine thing out of this world,
and yet before he came to his grave he wrote out this pitiful epitaph
for his monument: "I am Cyrus. I occupied the Persian Empire. I was
king over Asia. Begrudge me not this monument." But the world in after
years plowed up his sepulcher.

The world clapped its hands and stamped its feet in honor of Charles
Lamb; but what does he say? "I walk up and down, thinking I am happy,
but feeling I am not." Call the roll, and be quick about it. Samuel
Johnson, the learned! Happy? "No. I am afraid I shall some day get
craz