in the Lord.  I will repeat the strain.  No.  My voice refuses to fall back upon the ear.  Where is my heart that it beats not swelling to the anthem’s measure?  Cold! cold! cold!  Nay; I will rise.  I will respond unto the funeral dirge.  I will shout.  Oh! my trunk is hardened, and my tongue is glued.  Silence! they pause.  Say, do they hear me?  No.  Silence, horrible and awful.  Hark! they mourn with lamentation on my fate.  O, Heaven! must I endure all this?  Must the living weep for the dead, and the conscious dead be doomed to dismal silence.  Horror! horror! horror!  IS THIS TO BE DEAD?

* * * * *

A convocation!  Yes.  The holy brothers in assembled synod to elect a brother holier than themselves.  Nay, I do forbid.  I, the Abbot who have loved ye all, refuse permission to your meeting.  Disperse, disperse.  Do ye not hear?  Is there no charity alive?  Who dares usurp my chair, and I not yet entombed?  What! is justice driven out where heavenly men should dwell?  I see it.  I mark it.  The leaven of pride is kneaded in the brotherhood.  Intriguing hypocrites usurp the House of God.  What! brother John, the fat, the corpulent, the lazy! of whom I know ten thousand heinous sins; the least sufficient to condemn a soul.  An Abbot, chosen by the holy, is the elect of God.  But he—­no, no, no.  It shall not be.  God will forbid it.  They put the crosier in his hand.  For shame! for shame!  Let not the vicious living sit in the chair of virtue that is departed.  Why see! he kneels.  He kneels before the shrine, where, until now, he never bent to pray.  He grasps the crosier with loving firmness.  It shall not be.  Is there no interposing Deity to slay the sinner in his wickedness?  I, I will seize the crosier from his filthy hand.  No.  My arm lays idly at my side.  Is THIS TO BE DEAD?

* * * * *

They chant the funeral dirge.  The mighty torches flash their blazing light upon the frozen features of the dead.  Mine eyes are sealed.  I strain to open them.  No.  Light gleams in upon me as through a clear veil.  Ah! monster of hateful mien! demon deceitful in religious robes! avaunt!  Thou shalt not touch my corpse.  No.  Thank God!  It is a foretaste of thy love to come.  He passes on.  He dares not lay polluted hands upon the dead, whose becalmed face is looking up to thee.  The dead, the sacred dead.  The living are for the world, the dead are Thine.  Incense, and prayer, and psalms for the departed.  It is respectful, but what heed I?  Man comes into the world only to go out thereof.  What then?  The grave!  Horror.  I have preached thereof.  I have shocked others with the enormities of life until they clung unto the grave.  Now, I who have bidden the virtuous look to the hopes beyond it, myself would cry to live.  But no! they bear me on.  He, the foul monster, grins as he looks upon my outstretched limbs.  Wolf, I’ll pray for thee.  Breathe, breathe hardly, ye distended nostrils; it is your