visible symbol of a mistaken system. Our thoughts should soar upward
with the butterfly,--not linger with the exuviae that confined him.
In truth and reason, neither those whom we call the living, and still
less the departed, have anything to do with the grave."

"I never heard anything so heathenish!" said Mr. Wigglesworth,
perplexed and displeased at sentiments which controverted all his
notions and feelings, and implied the utter waste, and worse, of his
whole life's labor; "would you forget your dead friends, the moment
they are under the sod?"

"They are not under the sod," I rejoined; "then why should I mark the
spot where there is no treasure hidden! Forget them? No! But to
remember them aright, I would forget what they have cast off. And, to
gain the truer conception of DEATH, I would forget them GRAVE!"

But still the good old sculptor murmured, and stumbled, as it were,
over the gravestones amid which he had walked through life. Whether he
were right or wrong, I had grown the wiser from our companionship and
from my observations of nature and character, as displayed by those
who came, with their old griefs or their new ones, to get them
recorded upon his slabs of marble. And yet, with my gain of wisdom, I
had likewise gained perplexity; for there was a strange doubt in my
mind, whether the dark shadowing of this life, the sorrows and
regrets, have not as much real comfort in them--leaving religious
influences out of the question--as what we term life's joys.