But why talk thus? why mourn over dead hopes, dead joys, dead loves? 'Tis best to bury the dead out of our sight, and from them will spring many humbler hopes, quieter joys, more lowly affections, which 'smell sweet' though they 'blossom in the dust,' and they are the only resurrection these dead ones can ever have. I have been reading, in Maury's Geography of the Sea, how the sea's dead are preserved; how they stand like enchanted warders of the treasures of the deep, unchanged, except that the expression of life is exchanged for the ghastliness of death. So, down beneath the surface currents do some deep souls preserve their dead hopes, joys, loves. Oh, this is unwise; this is _not_ as God intended; for, unlike the sea's dead, there will be for these no resurrection. Thus far I wrote, when the current of my thoughts was changed by a lively tune struck up by a hand-organ across the street. I am not 'good' at distinguishing tunes, but this one I had so often heard in childhood, and had so wondered at its strange title, that I could but remember it. It was 'The Devil's Dream.' Were I a poet, I would write the words to it;--but then, too, I would need be a musician to compose a suitable new tune to the words! The rattling, reckless notes should be varied by those sad enough to make an unlost angel weep--an unlost angel, for, to the hot eyes of the lost, no tears can come. 'The _Devil's_ Dream'--perhaps it is of Heaven. Doubtless, frescoed in heavenly colors on the walls of his memory, are scenes from which fancy has but to brush the smoke and grime of perdition to restore them to almost their original beauty. I could even pity the 'Father of lies,' the 'Essence of evil,' the 'Enemy of mankind,' when I think of the terrible awaking. But does _he_ ever sleep? Has there since the fall been a pause in _his_ labors? Perhaps the reason this tune-time is so fast is because he is dreaming in a hurry,--must soon be up and doing. But it is my opinion that he has so wound up the world to wickedness, that he might sleep a hundred years, and it would have scarcely begun to run down on his awaking; when, from the familiar appearance of all things, he would swear 'it was but an after-dinner nap.' Indeed he might die, might to-day go out in utter nothingness like a falling star, and it would be away in the year two thousand before he would be missed,--we have learned to do our own devil-work so rarely. Meanwhile the well-wound world--as a music-box plays over the same tunes--would go on sinning over the same old sins. Satan is a great economist, but a paltry deviser,--he has not invented a new sin since the flood. My thoughts thus danced along to the music, when they were brought to a dead stop by its cessation; and it was time, you will think.... But, permit me to remind you that my name is not _acquired_, but _inherited_. At your service, MOLLY O'MOLLY. NO. II.