“The hieroglyphics of Thotmes, of Rameses, of Menephthah, and of the host of kings gone before these in Egypt’s old life, cannot be read; their language, letters, and traditions, too, sleep beyond the revelations of time, and yet their tombs, like these, give up their bones to the curious, who group through the catacombs, or dig at the base of their monumental pyramids.  All besides has passed away and is lost.  Not even the color of the great people who filled these monuments, and carved from the solid stone these miles of galleries, now filled to repletion with their mummied dead, and whose capacity is sufficient to entomb the dead of a nation for thousands of years, is known now to those who people the fields reclaimed from the forest beyond the memory of time.

“Nations are born, have their periods of youthful vigor, their manhood of sturdy strength, the tottering of decrepit age, the imbecility of superstitious dotage—­and their death is final extinction.  Such is man, and such is the world.  What we are, we know; what we shall be, we know not, save that we only leave a pile of bones.  Come, we are approaching home, and the moon dares to shine, ere yet the sun has gone.  Yonder is brother, and I expect a scolding; but let him fret—­it is not often I have a toy.  Fate threw you in my way and you must not complain if I use you.”

“I shall not complain,” replied the astonished young man; “but will you ride again to-morrow?”

She checked up her steed (a noble one he was) and seemed to take in his entire man, as slowly her eye went up from his stirrup to his face, when she said:  “To-morrow, ah, to-morrow!  Who can tell what to-morrow may bring forth?  To you and to me, there may come no to-morrow.  We may in a twinkling be hurled from our sphere into oblivion.  The earth may open to-night, or even now, and we may drop into her bosom of liquid fire, and be only ashes to-morrow.

“‘Take no heed for to-morrow,’ is the admonition of wisdom.  Look, yonder I was born.  Here sleep the Natchez.  See yonder tall mound, shaded from base to summit with the great forest trees peculiar to our land.  On the top of that mound stood the temple dedicated to the worship of the sun.  He smiles on it as the earth rolls up to hide his light away, as he did when the holy fire was watched by the priests in that temple.  But the Indian worshipper is gone; to him there comes no morrow.  There, on that mound, sleep the parents of my mother; to them comes no morrow. Allons! We shall be late for tea.  Brother has gone to sister’s, and we shall be alone.”  In a few minutes they were galloping down the avenue to the old Spanish-looking mansion, hid away almost from view in the forest and floral surroundings, which made it so lovely to view.