Here the young lady with the song book drew up closer to me, and looked up into my eyes with a gaze which no son of Adam could misunderstand.  I thought of Estella, like a true knight, and turned my face to the preacher.  While his doctrines were, to me, utterly heartless and abominable, there was about him such an ecstasy of voluptuousness, associated with considerable intellectual force and passionate oratory, that I was quite interested in him as a psychological study.  I could not help but think by what slow stages, through many generations, a people calling themselves Christians could have been brought to this curious commingling of intellectuality and bestiality; and all upon the basis of indifference to the sorrows and sufferings of their fellow-creatures.

“On with the dance!” shouted the preacher, “though we dance above graves.  Let the very calamities of the world accentuate our pleasures, even as the warm and sheltered fireside seems more delightful when we hear without the roar of the tempest.  The ancient Egyptians brought into their banquets the mummied bodies of the dead, to remind them of mortality.  It was a foolish custom.  Men are made to feast and made to die; and the one is as natural as the other.  Let us, on the other hand, when we rejoice together, throw open our windows, that we may behold the swarming, starving multitudes who stream past our doors.  Their pinched and ashy faces and hungry eyes, properly considered, will add a flavor to our viands.  We will rejoice to think that if, in this ill-governed universe, all cannot be blest, we at least rise above the universal wretchedness and are reserved for happiness.

“Rejoice, therefore, my children, in your wealth, in your health, in your strength, in your bodies, and in your loves.  Ye are the flower and perfection of mankind.  Let no plea shorten, by one instant, your pleasures.  Death is the end of all things—­of consciousness; of sensation; of happiness.  Immortality is the dream of dotards.  When ye can no longer enjoy, make ready for the grave; for the end of Love is death.

“And what is Love?  Love is the drawing together of two beings, in that nature-enforced affinity and commingling, when out of the very impact and identity of two spirits, life, triumphant life, springs into the universe.

“What a powerful impulse is this Love?  It is nature-wide.  The rushing together of the chemical elements; the attraction of suns and planets—­all are Love.  See how even the plant casts its pollen abroad on the winds, that it may somewhere reach and rest upon the loving bosom of a sister-flower; and there, amid perfume and sweetness and the breath of zephyrs, the great mystery of life is re-enacted.  The plant is without intellect, but it is sensible to Love.