ancient mourners. Neither had the stewards--if it were their taste
that arranged these details--forgotten the fantasy of the old
Egyptians, who seated a skeleton at every festive board, and mocked
their own merriment with the imperturbable grin of a death's-head.
Such a fearful guest, shrouded in a black mantle, sat now at the
head of the table. It was whispered, I know not with what truth,
that the testator himself had once walked the visible world with the
machinery of that sane skeleton, and that it was one of the
stipulations of his will, that he should thus be permitted to sit,
from year to year, at the banquet which he had instituted. If so, it
was perhaps covertly implied that he had cherished no hopes of bliss
beyond the grave to compensate for the evils which he felt or
imagined here. And if, in their bewildered conjectures as to the
purpose of earthly existence, the banqueters should throw aside the
veil, and cast an inquiring glance at this figure of death, as
seeking thence the solution otherwise unattainable, the only reply
would be a stare of the vacant eye-caverns and a grin of the
skeleton jaws. Such was the response that the dead man had fancied
himself to receive when he asked of Death to solve the riddle of his
life; and it was his desire to repeat it when the guests of his
dismal hospitality should find themselves perplexed with the same
question.

"What means that wreath?" asked several of the company, while
viewing the decorations of the table.

They alluded to a wreath of cypress, which was held on high by a
skeleton arm, protruding from within the black mantle.

"It is a crown," said one of the stewards, "not for the worthiest,