SCIENCE VERSUS SUPERSTITION. 329 



of grim old portrait, as if the " tick, tick," of the invisible 

 time-piece issued verily from the lace-fobbed pocket of some 

 buried ancestor; or heard, possibly, with creeping awe, to 

 proceed, " tick, tick, tick," from the elm- wood of a coffin 

 before consigned with its mute tenant to the earth ; heard, too, 

 by night-wakers, the sick and the solitary, or night- watchers 

 keeping their vigil beside the dying or the dead, who can 

 wonder that, with such concomitants, the hearts of the ignorant 

 should have often, and may sometimes still echo, fearfully, the 

 beat of the death-watch ? And, perhaps, with all our little 

 knowledge, our own might, under the like circumstances, do 

 the same. 



Thus much for the wailing pipe and monotonous tabors of 

 our " Insect Dirge-Players." 



