1 88 THE JO URNEYMAN. 



Swanson receives this letter on the 5th of September. 

 He answers it the same day. He implores his friend to 

 get rid of the melancholy which preys upon his mind by 

 a 'full, free, and simple acceptation of the gospel/ 

 ' Pardon me, my dear friend/ he adds, ' when I say that 

 I fear you have religious opinions not derived from the 

 Bible. Read it as if you never heard a word concerning 

 it before.' On the 30th of September Miller writes 

 again. ' I am still employed on the chapel brae in hew- 

 ing a second tombstone for Colonel G . That spot is now 

 beginning to lose its charms ; every breeze which passes 

 over it carries a shower of withered leaves upon its wings 

 the herbage is assuming a sallow hue, and I stand 

 alone in the midst of desolation, in all except sublimity of 

 feeling the prototype of Campbell's last man. I do not 

 know whether I am advancing in wisdom as in years 

 (I rather suspect not), but somehow the thought of death 

 often presses upon me in these days. I look upon the 

 little hillocks which are laid above men and women and 

 children, the traits of whose features are pictured in my 

 memory, and when by its aid I conjure up their forms 

 when, gay and restless, they followed the businesses or the 

 pleasures of life, and then when, in the eye of the im- 

 agination, I behold them stretched in the dark coffin, 

 cold and black and mouldy, without form or motion, I 

 pause and ask, what is this Death, this mighty Death, that 

 turns mirth to sadness, that unnerves the arm of the 

 strong and pales the cheek of the beautiful ? 



' I remember to have seen, many years ago, old Eben 

 the sexton digging a grave. He raised a coffin which, 

 though much decayed, was still entire, and placed it on 

 the earth he had thrown out. I was a mere boy at the 

 time, and out of a foolish curiosity, when his back was 

 turned, I raised with the edge of his spade the lid of 



