—How your flesh creeps, as the fearfully solemn tones fall on your ears. How icy cold is the blood in your veins—and yet the beaded drops of perspiration stand upon your temples, and in your palms! How stoutly you struggle to feel that you still have your senses; and yet, in your strong agony, you fiercely bite your lip through and through, and know it not. Alas!—what wo!—what wo!—what untold wo! No heart now, from whose depths to draw refreshing sympathy. No open ear, into which to pour the torrent of your untold grief. You cannot move from your tracks. You would not move if you could. You would not speak—nor utter so much as a faint cry. You would for ever stand there, like a lifeless block of marble. You wonder if all the rest feel as you do; and you try to lift your eyes, to meet the gaze which you feel is upon you. Just then, another wail of song—and your dimmed eyes drop to the ground. They behold what has been spared you till now. They fall into a gaping grave! —And then comes blindness again, and a swift swimming of the brain; and a sickening of all the senses; and you fear for yourself, lest you may suddenly reel and pitch into the newly-dug grave.— Oh, God!—you pray—if this cup would but have passed from me! Four men stand near the dark cavity. Their feet are imbedded in the gravel that has been freshly thrown out, and it rattles back again into the grave, with an unearthly echo. The men each hold on upon a strap. They let it slip—you can distinctly hear it—through their hands. Down—down—down! The coffin has gone down beneath the edge of the grave. It grates, and rubs, and rumbles against the rough sides of its cell, and then sinks into the silence and darkness for ever. You hear sobs—quick, convulsive, heart-rending sobs. They are full to bursting with distress. They come from the lips of her mother—her sister—her brother. You cannot bear it yourself. Oh, for only a single tear! Oh, for but a single heaving of the breast! —But no—but no. No one to whom to carry all your griefs now. They must flow back upon your heart again. They must scorch it with their boiling lava. They press even now so hard upon you, that you feel fearfully self-possessed. It is almost impossible to bear it all. Young girls step timidly up to the edge of the dark grave—snatch a look at the coffin that holds all your own heart—and cautiously throw roses down upon it. The sight goes to your very heart. But no tears yet. What a relief would they not be? And now you clench your hands tightly together, and bite your lip in fresh agony. You spit blood already from your mouth. Only a prayer—a slow, solemn prayer from the reverend man of God—and all is over. The dense throng begin to turn away. They are nearly all gone: they wait for you only. Some one touches you gently on your arm; but you are senseless as stone. Your eyes are fixed on that remorseless grave—the greedy grave, that has in a moment swallowed up all your hopes of earthly happiness.