disobeyed once, and my punishment was greater than I could bear." "Father," pleaded the physician again, "will you not move to the foot of the bed?" "Nay, I cannot," answered Death harshly: "I was commanded to stay here, and here I must stay." "And thou wilt stay there whatever I say or do?" asked the physician plaintively. "Yea," answered Death stoutly. Then, wrought up to desperation, the physician called the attendants in again and bade them turn the bed round, so that Death was left standing at the foot. But the Angel, seeing himself outwitted, rushed back to the head. The physician thereupon dismissed the attendants and upbraided him with his broken promise, but Death stood firm. At last the physician lost his temper and all his good bedside manner, and cried furiously: "If you're not gone instantly, I'll send for mother!" And the Angel of Death vanished in the twinkling of the bedpost. Till we can marry off Azrael to a termagant, I do not believe we shall ever really turn the tables upon him. Nothing is more surprising to a reader of advertisement columns than that people still continue to die. An army of alchemists has discovered the Elixir of Life, and retails it at one-and-three-halfpence a phial. Paracelsus has turned pill-maker, and prospers exceedingly, and sells out to a joint-stock company. But the great procession gravewards goes on, the "thin black lines" creeping along all day long, and there is no falling off in the consumption of sherry and biscuits. The scythe of the Black Angel shines--_opus fervet_--and it is always the mowing season. Sometimes he stands at the foot of the bed, and then there is triumph for the pharmacopoeia; sometimes he stands at the head, and then the bed becomes a grave and he a tombstone. Alas! his marriage is but a pleasant myth, and his infallible son a dream. Azrael is still a bachelor, and science is not shrew enough to drive him away. Perhaps 't is as well the leeches cannot avert him; perhaps 't is a blessing that they blunder, and the kindly grass grows over their mistakes. As it is, too many people are an unconscionable long time in dying. Their habit of procrastination is with them to the last. They linger on--a misery to themselves, and a thorn to those anxious to mourn their loss. They do not know how to retire gracefully. The art of leaving a world should be taught as a branch of deportment.