which is best, and which is worst; and we never _shall_ know, that's certain, until some of us is dead, and gets brought to life again;--and that you know never can be: for it's nothing but blarney an honest man tells you about the feelings of death, who has been relieved from suffocation by a lancet; or, to go further, it's foolish to listen to what one that has been some time under water, and gets picked up, and restored, as they call it,--to hear such a one tell what little or what much he suffered, with an idea of your gathering enough from his story to know what death by drowning is. If you do that, it's mighty mistaken you are; and I'll tell you why:--them people that gets restored that way or any other, no matter how, know but little about the thing, not much more than-myself or you and why don't they?--because _they never have died._ You never met with a man in your life, that had died, out and out. You couldn't; for them that dies completely never breathes mortal breath again. My father--rest his soul!--thought as I do; and he'd say, when the fire of existence is once extinguished, it's gone for ever and ever. When death has entirely done his work, the body is clay; then the spirit departs, and nothing human can ever bring it back. A man may lie motionless, breathless, and, what's more, senseless, at the bottom of a well, for an hour, or, may be, more,--who can tell?--and yet not die. In that case, by clever means and much work, the dying embers of life may be brought to a flame again; but once fairly dead, we're dead for ever. And so, I say, that the man who gets taken out of the water and recovers, can't say that he was dead. It's true, he has gone to the door; but has he passed over the threshold?--answer me that! If he had, he wouldn't have come back to us again, I'll engage! Don't you see, that we can't take a pair of compasses or a piece of tape, and measure exactly where life ends and death begins? And how do we know, when we take leave of a friend, because he don't move, and there's none o' the dew of life on the glass we put to his lips,--that he's dead?--Tossing the arms, or gnashing the teeth, shews pain, but there may be greater agony without it; for if we're violent, it shews we're strong; and it's suffer we may, much worse perhaps, when we're so weak that we can't wag a finger. Well, then,--and this is what I've been coming to all through my rigmarole, but I couldn't before,--how do we know that,--after the breath goes, and the limbs lose their power, and all is still,--the dying man, without breathing or moving, or his heart beating, don't feel the true grapple of death--the parting of soul and body?--Therefore, I say, as nobody ever came back, as I think, in body,--I don't spake of ghosts,--from the clutch of our enemy, we don't know anything much about him; and it's well we don't:--God be praised! all things in this world is ordered for the best!