y the fire much of the time,
and only on the last day stayed entirely in bed.

"During the sickness he always showed pleasure when his wife sat
by his side, and on one of the last days he managed to express, in
spite of his difficulty with words, how long and happy they had
lived together. The sight of his grandchildren always brought the
brightest smile to his face. On the last day he saw several of his
friends and took leave of them.

"Only at the last came pain, and this was at once relieved by
ether, and in the quiet sleep this produced he gradually faded
away in the evening of Thursday, April 27, 1882.

"Thirty-five years earlier he wrote one morning in his journal: 'I
said, when I awoke, after some more sleepings and wakings I shall
lie on this mattress sick; then dead; and through my gay entry
they will carry these bones. Where shall I be then? I lifted my
head and beheld the spotless orange light of the morning streaming
up from the dark hills into the wide universe.'"

After a few more sleepings and a few more wakings we shall all lie
dead, every living soul on this broad earth,--all who, at this
mathematical point in time called the present, breathe the breath
of life will pass away; but even now the new generation is
springing into life; within the next hour five thousand bodies
will be born into the world to perpetuate mankind; the whole lives
by the constant renewal of its parts; but the individual, what
becomes of the individual?

The five thousand bodies that are born within the hour take the
place of the something less than five thousand bodies that die
within the hour; the succession is preserved; the life of the
aggregate is assured; but the individual, what becomes of the
individual? Is he immortal, and if immortal whence came he and
whither does he go? if immortal, whence come these new souls which
are being delivered on the face of the globe at the rate of nearly
a hundred a minute? Are they from other worlds, exiled for a time
to this, or are they souls revisiting their former habitation?
Hardly the latter, for more are coming than going.

One midsummer night, while leaning over the rail of an ocean
steamer and watching the white foam thrown up by the prow, the
expanse of dark, heaving water, the vast dome of sky studded with
the brilliant jewels of space, an old man stopped by my side and
we talked of the grandeur of nature and the mysteries of life and
death, and he said, "My wife and I