those whose friends choose to pay an exorbitant sum to have them buried
under the pavement of a church. The Italians have an excessive dread of
corpses, and never meddle with those of their nearest and dearest
relatives. They have a horror of death, too, especially of sudden death,
and most particularly of apoplexy; and no wonder, as it gives no time for
the last rites of the Church, and so exposes them to a fearful risk of
perdition forever. On the whole, the ancient practice was, perhaps, the
preferable one; but Nature has made it very difficult for us to do
anything pleasant and satisfactory with a dead body. God knows best; but
I wish he had so ordered it that our mortal bodies, when we have done
with them, might vanish out of sight and sense, like bubbles. A person
of delicacy hates to think of leaving such a burden as his decaying
mortality to the disposal of his friends; but, I say again, how
delightful it would be, and how helpful towards our faith in a blessed
futurity, if the dying could disappear like vanishing bubbles, leaving,
perhaps, a sweet fragrance diffused for a minute or two throughout the
death-chamber. This would be the odor of sanctity! And if sometimes the
evaporation of a sinful soul should leave an odor not so delightful, a
breeze through the open windows would soon waft it quite away.

Apropos of the various methods of disposing of dead bodies, William Story
recalled a newspaper paragraph respecting a ring, with a stone of a new
species in it, which a widower was observed to wear upon his finger.
Being questioned as to what the gem was, he answered, "It is my wife."
He had procured her body to be chemically resolved into this stone. I
think I could make a story on this idea: the ring should be one of the
widower's bridal gifts to a second wife; and, of course, it should have
wondrous and terrible qualities, symbolizing all that disturbs the quiet
of a second marriage,--on the husband's part, remorse for his
inconstancy, and the constant comparison between the dead wife of his