110 THE METAMORPHOSES OF MATTER. 



Lady, a word with you. You are as great as great can 

 be, and I, what am I ? Nobody. Nobody ! I smile ; the 

 Scytheman smiles. Nobody ! Yes, I am a body, or I have 

 a body, put the case as you will. Calmly let us see what 

 will become of your body, and what will become of my 

 body. 



When you die, some fashionable undertaker will solder your 

 150 pounds of bone and blood and flesh into a leaden coffin, 

 and pack the leaden coffin away into another coffin, decking 

 the second out with velvet and gewgaws as befits your superior 

 station. Then to the vault you shall be borne ; earth must 

 not hold you. The cloistered charnel is your resting-place ; 

 there to defy all elemental change ; braving dissolution. 



Alas, my lady, if you could but see, as I by the light of 

 chemistry can see, that festering wreck of poisonous corrup- 

 tion seething within that leaden box of yours in twelve short 

 months or less ! Your flesh, instead of dissolving harmlessly 

 into thin air, or crumbling little by little to mother earth, 

 thence passing into trees and flowers, a part of their very 

 being, the elements of your body will have fretted into 

 poisonous compounds, the veriest breath of which bursting 

 free, as some day it must, will speed about pestilence-breeding. 

 There's no avoiding the common lot, my lady none. Ashes 

 to ashes, dust to dust: thus it is written, and thus shall it 

 be. Material elements know their destiny, and knowing must 

 obey. To move on, combining and recombining, idle never, 

 that is their destiny : and typical enough of what we see in 

 life if their energies be restrained, if honest fields of energy 

 be barred, they take to mischief. 



Your 150 pounds (more or less) of bodily material are 

 only lent, my lady; held on the frailest of tenures. They 

 are not freehold, nor even leasehold. The holding is not 

 yearly, monthly, weekly not even daily. Asleep or awake, 

 Dame Nature puts her physical forces in possession, and takes 

 your very substance in kind every moment of your existence ; 



