like eagle’s talons, my wrists were bursting, the bones of my body ached, and I heard the chill whisper of Death (who came flitting up to me as a sheeted ghost) bidding my poor heart be still:  yet I would live on, I would cling on, though swinging fearfully from that up-rushing throne; for my mind was unsubdued, and my reason would not die, but rebelled against his mandate.  And so the pinions flapped away, the dreadful cavalcade of clouds followed, we broke the waterspout, raced the whirlwind, hunted the thunder to his caverns, rushed through the light and wind-tost mountains of the snow, pierced with a crash the thick sea of ice, that like a globe of hollow glass separates earth and its atmosphere from superambient space, and flying forward through the airless void, lighted on another world.

“Then triumphed my reason, for I stood on that silent shore, fearless though alone, and boldly upbraided the dread Power that had brought me thither,—­’Traitress, thou hast not conquered; my mind is still thy master, and if the weaker body failed me, it hath been filled with new energies in these quickening skies:  I am immortal as thou art; yet shalt thou fear me, and heed my biddings:  wherefore hast thou dared—?’ but my wrathful eye looked on her bewitching beauty, and I had no tongue to chide, as she said in the sobriety of loveliness,—­’My son, have I not answered thy prayer? yet but in part; behold, I have good store of precious things to show thee:’  with that, she kissed my brow, and I fell into an ecstasy.

“I perceived that I was come to the kingdom of disembodied spirits, and they crowded around me as around some strange creature, clustering with earnest looks, perchance to inquire of me somewhat from the world I had just left.  Although impalpable, and moving through each other, transparent and half-invisible, each wore the outward shape and seeming garments he had mostly been known by upon earth:  and my reason whispered me, this is so, until the resurrection; the seen material form is the last idea which each one hath given to the world, but the glorified body of each shall be as diverse from this, yet being the same, as the gorgeous tulip from its brown bulb, the bird of paradise from his spotted egg, or the spreading beech from the hard nut that had imprisoned it.—­Then Imagination stood with me as an equal friend, and spake to me soothingly, saying, ’Knowest thou any of these?’—­and I answered, ’Millions upon millions, a widespread inundation of shadowy forms, from martyred Abel to the still-born babe of this hour I behold the gathered dead; millions upon millions, like the leaves of the western forests, like the blades of grass upon the prairie, they are here crowding innumerable:  yet should my spirit know some among them, as having held sweet converse with their minds in books; only this boon, sweet mistress, from yonder mingled harvest of the dead, in grace cull me mine intimates, that I may see them even with my