“Escape from death!” he murmured, gazing wildly around as he spoke, on the vast skeleton crowd that encircled him..  “Old man, dost thou also talk of dream-like impossibilities?  Wilt thou also maintain a creed of hope when naught awaits us but despair?  Art thou fooled likewise with the glimmering Soul-mirage of a never-to-be-realized future? ...  Escape from death? ...  How?—­and where!  Art not these dry and vacant forms sufficiently eloquent of the all-omnipotence of Decay?” ... and he caught his unknown companion almost fiercely by the long robe, while a sound that was half a sob and half a sigh came from his aching throat..  “Lo you, how emptily they stare upon us! ... how frozen-piteous is their smile! ...  Poor, poor frail shapes! ... nay!—­who would think these hollow shells of bone had once been men!  Men with strong hearts, warm-flowing blood, and throbbing pulses, . . men of thought and action, who maybe did most nobly bear themselves in life upon the earth, and yet are now forgotten, . . men—­ah, great Heaven! can it be that these most rueful, loathly things have loved, and hoped, and labored through all their days for such an end as this!  Escape from death! ... alas, there is no escape, . . ’tis evident we all must die, . . die, and with dust-quenched eyes unlearn our knowledge of the sun, the stars, the marvels of the universe,—­for us no more shall the flowers bloom or the sweet birds sing; the poem of the world will write itself anew in every roseate flushing of the dawn,—­but we,—­we who have joyed therein,—­we who have sung the praises of the light, the harmonies of wind and sea, the tunefulness of woods and fields,—­we whose ambitious thoughts have soared archangel-like through unseen empyreans of space, there to drink in a honeyed hope of Heaven,—­we shall be but dead! ... mute, cold, and stirless as deep, undug stones, . . dead! ...  Ah God, thou Utmost Cruelty!”—­and in a sudden access of grief and passion he raised one hand and shook it aloft with a menacing gesture—­“Would I might look upon Thee face to face, and rebuke Thee for Thy merciless injustice!”

He spoke wildly as though possessed by a sort of frenzy,—­his unknown companion heard him with an air of mild and pitying patience.

“Peace—­peace!  Blaspheme not the Most High, my son!” he said gently, yet reproachfully.  “Distraught as thou dost seem with some strange misery, and sick with fears, forbear thine ignorant fury against Him who hath for love’s dear sake alone created thee.  Control thy soul in patience!—­surely thou art afflicted by thine own vain and false imaginings, which for a time contort and darken the clear light of truth.  Why dost thou thus disquiet thyself concerning the end of life, seeing that verily it hath no end? ... and that what we men call death is not a conclusion but merely a new beginning?  Waste not thy pity on these skeleton forms,—­the empty dwellings of martial spirits long since fled, . . as well weep