I couldn’t go on about my cousin Jessie, for I was interrupted by the second post with more birthday compliments, from young ladies now about Jessie’s age—letters which of course required immediate answer,—some also with flowers, which required to be immediately put into water, and greatly worried me by upsetting themselves among my books all day afterwards; but I let myself be worried, for love;—and, from a well-meaning and kindly feeling friend, some very respectful and respectable poetry, beautifully written, (and I read part of it, for love, but I had much rather he had sent me sixpence, for I hate poetry, mostly, and love pence, always); and to-day, half-past seven before chapel, my mind is otherwise set altogether, for I am reading Leviticus carefully now, for my life of Moses; and, in working out the law of the feast of harvest, chanced on the notable verse, xxiii. 24: “In the seventh month, in the first day of the month, shall ye have a Sabbath, a memorial of blowing of trumpets, an holy convocation;” and then flashed on me, all in a minute, the real meaning of Holbein’s introduction to the Dance of Death, (the third woodcut in the first edition), which till this moment I only took for his own symbol of the Triumph of Death, adopted from Orcagna and others, but which I see now, in an instant, to be the un-Holy Convocation; the gathering together to their temple of the Tribes of Death, and the blowing of trumpets on their solemn feast day, and sabbath of rest to the weary in evil doing. And, busy friends, in the midst of all your charming preparations for the Spring season, you will do well to take some method of seeing that design, and meditating, with its help, upon the grave question, what kind of weariness you will have to rest from. My own thoughts of it are disturbed, as I look, by that drummer-death, in front, [22] with his rattling and ringing kettledrums (he the chief Musician in the Psalm for the sons of Korah—Dathan and Abiram, because his sounding is on Skin, with sticks of Bone,) not only because of my general interest in drummers, but because, after being much impressed, when I was a child, by the verses I had to learn about the last trump, out of the 15th of 1st Corinthians,—when I became a man, and put away childish things, I used often to wonder what we should all say of any sacred Saga among poor Indians whose untutored mind sees God in clouds, if it told them that they were all to rise from the dead at the sound of the last drum. And here I’m interrupted again by a delightful letter about the resurrection of snails, Atropos really managing matters, at present, like the daintiest and watchfullest housewife for me,—everything in its place, and under my hand.