your religion that it should be the only one thing that in these
days takes the crab's move--backwards. You are indebted to your
forefathers for your would-be belief, as well as for their genuine
churches. You hardly know what your belief is. There is my aunt--as
good a specimen as I know of what you call a Christian!--so
accustomed is she to think and speak too after the forms of what you
heard my cousin call heathenism, that she would never have
discovered, had she been as wide awake as she was sound asleep, that
the song I sung was anything but a good Christian ballad."

"Pardon me; I think you are wrong there."

"What! did you never remark how these Christian people, who profess
to believe that their great man has conquered death, and all that
rubbish--did you never observe the way they look if the least
allusion is made to death, or the eternity they say they expect
beyond it? Do they not stare as if you had committed a breach of
manners? Religion itself is the same way: as much as you like about
the church, but don't mention Christ! At the same time, to do them
justice, it is only of death in the abstract they decline to hear;
they will listen to the news of the death of a great and good man,
without any such emotion. Look at the poetry of death--I mean the
way Christian poets write of it! A dreamless sleep they call it--the
bourne from whence, knows no waking. 'She is gone for ever!' cries
the mother over her daughter. And that is why such things are not to
be mentioned, because in their hearts they have no hope, and in
their minds no courage to face the facts of existence. We haven't
the pluck of the old fellows, who, that they might look death
himself in the face without dismay, accustomed themselves, even at
their banquets, to the sight of his most loathsome handiwork, his