“We shall all spring upward from the ground, winged; and with a power which will bear us swiftly to the throne, which endureth forever and forever.” I hastened to bear her father to her bed-side. The last breath had parted from her lips, and as he questioned her, and she returned no answer; as he called to her, and she called not back again, he fell upon her, and his moan filled the room. “Gone! oh my daughter; my jewel of great price—the heir to all my riches—my second life! Is the breath of man unbought! Can no one bribe death? Is there joy in the cold grave? O, come to me, my child, and sleep in my bosom, and fare sumptuously every day.” And he drew much gold from his pockets, and heaped it upon the bed beside her, and wondered that she should die. And the world wondered, also, that she should die. And idle curiosity poured in to look upon her dust; and was shocked, and shrugged its shoulders, and exclaimed—“what a pity! In the morning of life—and so rich!” And again the world forgot her year of mourning, and her gradual decay, and carried its thoughts back to the hours when that small, pinched face was radiant with health, and a new-found happiness; and laughter rang from those thin lips, and merriment sparkled in the closed eye, and whispered and coined suggestions, and said that “after all she was not the miser’s daughter, and had died suddenly with the coming of that certainty.” Fools and Idiots! Is not the grave open to all? And did she not well to love her father’s soul better than his wealth? And did she not well to labor for it, unceasingly; and then, the crowning of that labor, to lie down and die? SECTION XV. The daughter of the rich man was carried to her grave upon the shoulders of the rich, followed by a crowd of worshipers; and as the body was borne into the Chapel of the Departed, and the procession flowed in, and filled the aisles, the choristers chanted the _Requiem_ for the dead. Dies iræ, dies illa Solvet secium in favilla, Teste David cum Sybilla. “My daughter, oh! my daughter; why wouldst thou die?” Quantus tremor est futurus, Quando Judex est venturus, Cuncta stricte discussurus. “Return, oh! return, return again to me.” Tuba mirum spargens sonum Per sepulchra regionum, Coget omnes ante thronum! “and thou shalt make me what thou willest.” Mors stupebit, et natura, Cum resurget creatura, Judicanti responsura. “The shining gold is thine, and houses, and lands, and all the glory of life.” Liber scriptus proferetur, In quo totum continetur, Unde mundus judicetur. “My daughter, oh! my daughter, return again to me.” Judex ergo cum sedebit Quidquid latet apparebit, Nil inultum remanebit. “Thy suitors call thee; the music, the dance, the revelry of joy.”