of grass for pillows:  With these accommodations they hoped to pass a better night than the last, especially as, to their great comfort, not a musquito was to be seen.  Here then they lay down, and, such is the force of habit, they resigned themselves to sleep, without once reflecting upon the probability and danger of being found by the Indians in that situation.  If this appears strange, let us for a moment reflect, that every danger, and every calamity, after a time becomes familiar, and loses its effect upon the mind.  If it were possible that a man should first be made acquainted with his mortality, or even with the inevitable debility and infirmities of old age, when his understanding had arrived at its full strength, and life was endeared by the enjoyments of youth, and vigour, and health, with what an agony of terror and distress would the intelligence be received! yet, being gradually acquainted with these mournful truths, by insensible degrees, we scarce know when, they lose all their force, and we think no more of the approach of old age and death, than these wanderers of an unknown desert did of a less obvious and certain evil, the approach of the native savages, at a time when they must have fallen an easy prey to their malice or their fears.  And it is remarkable, that the greater part of those who have been condemned to suffer a violent death, have slept the night immediately preceding their execution, though there is perhaps no instance of a person accused of a capital crime having slept the first night of his confinement.  Thus is the evil of life in some degree a remedy for itself, and though every man at twenty deprecates fourscore, almost every man is as tenacious of life at fourscore as at twenty; and if he does not suffer under any painful disorder, loses as little of the comforts that remain by reflecting that he is upon the brink of the grave, where the earth already crumbles under his feet, as he did of the pleasures of his better days, when his dissolution, though certain, was supposed to be at a distance.[84]

[Footnote 84:  The reader will receive this hypothetical statement as he finds it agreeable, or not, to his own experience,—­a better guide, in all probability, than mere philosophy.  The writer has his doubts upon the subject.  But let every one judge for himself.  For his part, he is convinced that frequent contemplation of death, though it certainly aids the mind in reasoning about it, does not lessen the apprehension of it, but the reverse:  so that, did not some peculiar principle come to his aid, and seem indeed to acquire continually more clearness and efficiency, his distress or uneasy feeling would be much heightened by the exercise.  But he sees no reason either to expect, or to wish, that it may be ever otherwise with him; for he is persuaded, that much of man’s dignity and welfare consists in his seeing things just as they are, without any disguise or delusion; and that whatever death really is, there