them the spirit of death and decay had descended;
I had no education to dread here: should I not have a chance of seeing
nature? Alas! a pawnbroker could not have been more practical and
commonplace, for this was what the kneeling woman said to the woman
upright--this and nothing more: "Eh, what extravagance!"

O nineteenth century, wonderful art thou indeed--wonderful, but
wearisome in thy stale and deadly uniformity. Thy men are more like
numerals than men. They must bear their idiosyncrasies or their
professions written on a placard about their neck, like the scenery in
Shakespeare's theatre. The precepts of economy have pierced into the
lowest ranks of life; and there is now a decorum in vice, a
respectability among the disreputable, a pure spirit of Philistinism
among the waifs and strays of thy Bohemia. For lo! thy very gravediggers
talk politics; and thy castaways kneel upon new graves, to discuss the
cost of the monument and grumble at the improvidence of love.

Such was the elegant apostrophe that I made as I went out of the gates
again, happily satisfied in myself, and feeling that I alone of all whom
I had seen was able to profit by the silent poem of these green mounds
and blackened headstones.

FOOTNOTES:

[34] "Religio Medici," Part ii.

[35] "Duchess of Malfi."

IV

NURSES

I knew one once, and the room where, lonely and old, she waited for
death. It was pleasant enough, high up above the lane, and looking forth
upon a hill-side, covered all day with sheets and yellow blankets, and
with long lines of underclothing fluttering between the battered posts.
There were any number of cheap prints, and a drawing by one of "her
children," and there were flowers in the window, and a sickly canary
withered into consumption in an ornamental cage. The bed, with its
checked coverlid, was in a closet. A great Bible lay on the table; and
her drawers were full of "scones," which it was her pleasure to give to
young visitors such as I was then.

You may not think this a melancholy picture; but the canary, and the
cat, and the white mouse that she had for a while, and that died, were
all indications of the want that ate into her heart. I think I know a
little of what that old woman felt; and I am as sure as if I had seen
her, that she sat many an hour in silent tears, with the big Bible open
before her clouded eyes.

If you could look back upon her life, and feel the great chain that had
linked h