“When I walk in graveyards and see the childish twaddle about ‘Rest,’ ‘Heavenly Mansions,’ and ‘New Jerusalems,’ there carved upon the stones, I am pained at the mental infancy they denote. Dying does not mean rest, nor does it open heavenly mansions or golden cities to us. The striving and the climbing go on and never end. “It is the ache in the heart, the void in the soul that cries out to be filled which lift us upward. Were we content, we should rise no higher. Were we satisfied, we should be in a condition which would insure our destruction. But the soul’s hunger for finer and better food is the principle of eternal life which makes us indestructible and eternally expansive. By means of it we grow. Thank God that neither here nor elsewhere can we attain content! “And as we go higher we can reveal to lower souls their sorrows, and show them how to overcome them--how to grow. This is the greatest service one soul can render another. “But we must not be content with mouthing theories--we must live our love, must give from the heart and look only to the heart, for ‘out of the heart are the issues of life.’ ‘The sign of the mastery of the divine life in us is the readiness to serve.’ “And we must not dream of rest. There is none anywhere, neither here nor on all the endless road that stretches before us. Life is action, ceaseless action. “Nor is there any heavenly shore where we can wander free from perplexities and obstacles. Always, always will there be something to overcome. We are building, building, ever building, we know not clearly what. Every unfolding of the divine life within us opens the way to still more unfolding. The heaven, the happiness, the joy we dream of and search for, is in the unfolding, not in any fixed state at which we shall arrive, for we pause nowhere. “‘This is not Death’s world: it is Life’s. Death has no empire anywhere.’ In time to come its very signs shall pass away. There shall be no more graves, nor marks to graves to say that the dust of any lie there. All dust is the same and all places the same; and life everlasting is the eternal heritage of all souls.” A few days later Cartice said she saw the Butterfly near her, and that she now had most beautiful wings. Others thought her mind wandered, but Lilla understood. Clasping the hand of her friend, she smiled and slept; but her waking was on the other side of death, with her own people. CHAPTER XXV. LAST WORDS. Come, lovely and soothing death, Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving, In the day, in the night, to all, to each, Sooner or later, delicate death. Prais’d be the fathomless universe, For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious, And for love, sweet love--but praise! praise! praise! For the sure enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death. --_Walt Whitman._