that
was contagious.

"You think of death as a Christian," said I.

"And how else should I think of it?" she replied. "Can I not trust Him
in whom I have believed? What is it more than passing from a lower to a
higher state of life--from the natural to the spiritual world? When the
hour comes, I will lay me down in peace and sleep."

She remained silent for some moments, her thoughts apparently indrawn.
The brief, closing sentence was spoken as if she were lapsing into
reverie. I thought the subject hardly in place for a wedding occasion,
and was about starting another theme, when she said--

"Do you not think, Doctor, that this dread of dying, which haunts most
people like a fearful spectre--the good as well as the bad--is a very
foolish thing? We are taught, from childhood, to look forward to death
as the greatest of all calamities; as a change attended by indefinable
terrors. Teachers and preachers ring in our ears the same dread chimes,
thrilling the strongest nerves and appalling the stoutest hearts. Death
is pictured to us as a grim monster; and we shudder as we look at the
ghastly apparition. Now, all this comes from what is false. Death is
not the crowning evil of our lives; but the door through which we pass,
tranquilly, into that eternal world, which is our destined home. I hold
in my thought a different picture of Death from that which affrighted
me in childhood. The form is one of angelic beauty, and the countenance
full of love. I know, that when I pass along the dark and narrow way
that leads from this outer world of nature, to the inner world from
which it has existence, that my hand will rest firmly in that of an
angel, commissioned of God to guide my peaceful footsteps. Is not that a
better faith?"

"Yes, a better and a truer," said I.

"It is not the death passage that we need fear. That has in it no
intrinsic evil. It is the sleep of mortality, and the rest is sweet
to all. If we give place to fear, let it be for that state beyond the
bourne, which will be unhappy in the degree that we are lovers of self
and the world--that is, lovers of evil instead of good. As the tree
falls, so it lies, Doctor. As our quality is at death, so will it remain
to all eternity. Here is the just occasion for dread."

She would have kept on, but her attention was drawn away by the remark
of a lady who came up at the moment. I left her side and passed to
another part of the room; but her words, tone, and impressive