I see the long locks on the pillow, the smile on the ashen lips, the
thin, cold fingers faintly pressing my own, and hear the broken
voice saying, "I am going now. I am not afraid. Why weep ye? Though
I were to live the full time allotted to man, I should not be more
ready, nor more willing than now." But over this there comes a
shudder and a groan that all the mirthfulness of the careless was
impotent to drown.

Three days previous to the death-night, three days previous to the
transit of the soul from the clayey tabernacle to the house not;
made with hands--from dishonour to glory--let me turn theme over as
so many leaves.

The first of the November mornings, but the summer had tarried late,
and the wood to the south of our homestead lifted itself like a
painted wall against the sky--the squirrel was leaping nimbly and
chattering gayly among the fiery tops of the oaks or the dun foliage
of the hickory, that shot up its shelving trunk and spread its
forked branches far over the smooth, moss-spotted boles of the
beeches, and the limber boughs of the elms. Lithe and blithe he was,
for his harvest was come.

From the cracked beech-burs was dropping the sweet, angular fruit,
and down from the hickory boughs with every gust fell a shower of
nuts--shelling clean and silvery from their thick black hulls.

Now and then, across the stubble-field, with long cars erect, leaped
the gray hare, but for the most part he kept close in his burrow,
for rude huntsmen were on the hills with their dogs, and only when