A beautiful custom is it to decorate the dead with fresh flowers! There is something in the delicate, fairy-like perfume, and in the magical shadings and formation of flowers, that make them appropriate offerings to the dead. Strange mystical things that they are, seemingly instinct with a new and inchoate life; breathing in their heavenly fragrance of a hidden blessing, telling a story which our dull ears of clay can never comprehend. Symbols of diviner being, expressions of quickening beauty, we understand ye not. We only _feel_ that ye are God's richest blessing to us, therefore we offer ye to our loved and holy dead! When the broad daylight began to beam in through the crevices of the shutters, and noise of busy life sounded from without, the family rose. Separately they entered the room, each turning down the spread, and gazing tearfully upon the ghastly face. Often and often they kissed the brow, cheek, and lips. "How lovely he was in life," said Miss Jane. "Indeed he was, and he is now an angel," replied Miss Tildy, with a fresh gush of emotion. "My poor, poor boy," said Mr. Peterkin, as he sank down on the bed beside the body; "how proud I was of him. I allers knowed he'd be tuck 'way from me. He was too putty an' smart an' good fur this world. My heart wus so sot on him! yit sometimes he almost run me crazy. I don't think it was just in Providence to take my only boy. I could have better spared one of the gals. Oh, tain't right, no how it can be fixed." And thus he rambled on, perfectly unconscious of the bold blasphemy which he was uttering with every breath he drew. To impugn the justice of his Maker's decrees was a common practice with him. He had so long rejoiced in power, and witnessed the uncomplaining vassalage of slaves, that he began to regard himself as the very highest constituted authority! This is but one of the corrupting influences of the slave-system.