exceptionable, or supernatural, in the life of the soul after death. Resting
by the tumulus, the spirit of the man who had been interred there was to me
really alive, and very close. This was quite natural, as natural and simple
as the grass waving in the wind, the bees humming, and the larks' songs.
Only by the strongest effort of the mind could I understand the idea of
extinction; that was supernatural, requiring a miracle; the immortality of
the soul natural, like earth. Listening to the sighing of the grass I felt
immortality as I felt the beauty of the summer morning, and I thought beyond
immortality, of other conditions, more beautiful than existence, higher than
immortality.

That there is no knowing, in the sense of written reasons,
whether the soul lives on or not, I am fully aware. I do not
hope or fear. At least while I am living I have enjoyed the
idea of immortality, and the idea of my own soul. If then,
after death, I am resolved without exception into earth, air,
and water, and the spirit goes out like a flame, still I shall
have had the glory of that thought.

It happened once that a man was drowned while bathing, and his
body was placed in an outhouse near the garden. I passed the
outhouse continually, sometimes on purpose to think about it,
and it always seemed to me that the man was still living.
Separation is not to be comprehended; the spirit of the man did not appear
to have gone to an in conceivable distance. As my thought flashes itself
back through the centuries to the luxury of Canopus, and can see the gilded
couches of a city extinct, so it slips through the future, and immeasurable
time in front is no bounandary to it. Certainly the man was not dead to me.

Sweetly the summer air came up to the tumulus, the grass sighed softly, the