shoulder is in the sphere of physical expression, only seem to deepen the determined gloom. And if it is some one you love who thinks he will soon be dead and tells you so, the cruelty is very great. When death really comes, is not what the ordinary decent dier wants quiet, that he may leave himself utterly in the hands of God? There should be no massing of temporarily broken-hearted onlookers about his bed, no leave-takings and eager gatherings-up of last words, no revellings of relatives in the voluptuousness of woe, no futile exhortations, using up the last poor breaths, not to weep to persons who would consider it highly improper to leave off doing it, and no administration of tardy blessings. Any blessings the dier has to invoke should have been invoked and done with long ago. In this last hour, at least, can one not be left alone? Do you remember Pater's strange feeling about death? Perhaps you do not, for you told me once you did not care about him. Well, it runs through his books, through all their serenity and sunlight, through exquisite descriptions of summer, of beautiful places, of heat and life and youth and all things lovely, like a musty black riband, very poor, very mean, very rotten, that yet must bind these gracious flowers of light at last together, bruising them into one piteous mass of corruption. It is all very morbid: the fair outward surface of daily life, the gay, flower-starred crust of earth, and just underneath horrible tainted things, things forlorn and pitiful, things which we who still walk on the wholesome grass must soon join, changing our life in the roomy sunshine into something infinitely dependent and helpless, something that can only dimly live if those strong friends of ours in the bright world will spare us a thought, a remembrance, a few minutes from their plenty for sitting beside us, room in their hearts for yet a little love and sorrow. 'Dead cheek by dead cheek, and the rain soaking down upon one from above....' Does not that sound hopeless? After reading these things, sweet with the tainted sweetness of decay, of, ruin, of the past, the gone, it is like having fresh spring water dashed over one on a languid afternoon to remember Walt Whitman's brave attitude toward 'delicate death,' 'the sacred knowledge of death,' 'lovely, soothing death,' 'cool, enfolding death,' 'strong deliveress,' 'vast and well-veiled death,' 'the body gratefully nestling close to death,' 'sane and sacred death.' That is the spirit that makes one brave and fearless, that makes one live beautifully and well, that sends one marching straight ahead with limbs that do not tremble and head held high. Is it not natural to love such writers best? Writers who fill one with glad courage and make one proud of the path one has chosen to walk in?