we are all right again. Our drafts upon our constitution are promptly
paid, and we expect this will always be the case; but some day they will
come back to us, protested; Nature will refuse to meet our demands, and we
shall find ourselves physical bankrupts.

We are furnished in the beginning with a certain vital force upon which we
may draw. We can be spendthrifts and waste it in youth, or be wise and so
husband it till manhood. Our shortcomings are all charged against this
stock. Nature's memory never fails; she keeps her account with perfect
exactness. Every physical sin subtracts from the sum and strength of our
years. We may cure a disease, but it never leaves us as it found us. We
may heal a wound, but the scar still shows. We reap as we sow, and we may
either gather in the thorns, one by one, to torment and destroy, or we may
rejoice in the happy harvest of a hale old age.




I.


THE SKELETON.

"Not in the World of Light alone,
Where God has built His blazing throne,
Nor yet alone on earth below,
With belted seas that come and go,
And endless isles of sunlit green
Is all thy Maker's glory seen--
Look in upon thy wondrous frame,