o shall answer? Is it
the mind which remembers, and is the mind the soul? or is the soul
independent of the mind, surviving the mind's extinction? and do the
memories of time die with time? or,

Do these pursue beyond the grave?
Must the surviving spirit have
Its memories of time and grief?
Then, surely, death is poor relief.
Shall it forget the all of time,
When time's with all her uses gone,
And be a babe in that new clime?
Then death is but oblivion.

Youth's happiness is half of hope; all that of age is memory--and yet
these memories more frequently sadden than gladden the heart. Then what
is life to age? Garrulity, and to be in the way. Our household gods
grow weary of our worship, and the empty stool we have filled in gray
and trembling age in the temple we have built, when we are gone is
kicked away, and we are forgotten; our very children regret (though
they sometimes assume a painful apprehension) we do not make haste to
die--if we have that they crave, and inherit when we shall have passed
to eternity. But if the gift of raiment and food is imposed by poverty
on those who gave them birth, they complain, and not unfrequently turn
from their door the aged, palsied parent, to die, or live on strangers'
charity. Sad picture, but very true, very true; poor human nature! And
man, so capable in his nature of this ungodliness, boasts himself made
after God's own image. Vanity of vanities!

Nature's harmony, nature's loveliness, nature's expansive greatness and
grandeur teaches of God, and godliness. The inanimate and unthinking
are consistently harmonious and beautiful; man only mars the harmony,
and makes a hell for man in time. Then, is time his all? or, shall this
accursed rabidness be purged away with death, and he become a tone in
accord with inanimate things? or, shall this but purify as fire the
yielding metal, the inner man, which hope or instinct whispers lives,
and animates its tenement of time, to view, to know, and to enjoy
creation through eternity? Wild thoughts are kindling in my brain, wild
feelings stir my heart.

This is a beautiful Sabbath morning, the blazing sun wades through the
blue ether, and space seems redolent of purity and beauty. The breeze
is as bland as the breath of a babe, coming through my casement with
the light, and bathing my parched cheek; and the sere summer is warming
away the gentle, genial spring. This is her last day; and to how many
countless thousand