XXIX. A CROW THAT FLIES IN HEAVEN'S SWEETEST AIR. FLEETLY the Ibis flew. The divine days came and went. Unheeded the longing sunrise, the lingering eve. Unheeded the lonely shore of Nubia, that swept, sakia-singing, seaward. Unheeded the new world of African solitude, the great realm of Ethiopia. Unheeded the tropic upon which, for the first time, we really entered; and the pylons, columns, and memorial walls, that stood solitary in the sand. The Howadji lay ill in the blue cabin, and there is no beauty, no antiquity, no new world, to an eye diseased. Yet illness, said a white-haired form that sat shadowy by his side, hath this in it, that it smooths the slope to death. The world is the organization of vital force; but when a man sickens, the substantial reality reels upon his brain. The cords are cut that held him to the ship that sails so proudly the seas, and he drifts lonely in the jolly-boat of his own severed existence, toward shores unknown. Drifts, not unwillingly, as he sweeps farther away, and his eyes are darkened. After acute agony, said still the white-haired shadow, pausing slowly, as if he, too, were once alive and young; death is like sleep after toil. After long decay, it is as natural as sunset. Yet to sit rose-garlanded at the feast of love and beauty, yourself the lover, and the most beautiful, and hearing that you shall depart thence in a hearse, not in a bridal chariot, to rise smilingly and go gracefully away, is a rare remembrance for any man-an heroic death that does not often occur nor is it to be rashly wished. For the heroic death, is the gods' gift to their favorites. Who shall be presumptuous enough to claim that favor. Nay, if all men were heroes, how hard it would be to die and leave them; for our humanity loves heroes more than angels and saints. It would be the discovery of a boundless California, and gold would be precious no more. The shadow was silent, and the Nubian moonlight crept yellow along the wall; then, playing upon the Howadji's heart-strings vaguely and at random, as a dreaming artist touching the keys of an instrument, he proceeded. Yet we may all know how many more the dead are than the living, nor be afraid to join them. Here, in Egypt, it is tombs which are inhabited, it is the cities which are deserted. The great Ramses has died, and all his kingdom-why not little you and I? Nor care to lie in a tomb so splendid. Ours shall be a skyvaulted mausoleum, sculptured with the figures of all life. No man of mature years but has more friends dead than living. His friendly reunion is a shadowy society. Who people for him the tranquil twilight and the summer dawn? In the woods we knew, what forms and faces do we see? What is the meaning of music, and who are its persons? What are the voices of midnight, and what words slide into our minds, like sudden moonlight into dark chambers, and apprise us that we move in the vast society of all worlds and all times, and that if the van is lost to our eyes in the dazzling dawn, and the rear disappears in the shadow of night our mother, and our comrades fall away from our sides —the van, and the rear, and the comrades are yet, and all, moving forward like the water-drops of the Amazon to the sea. It is not strange that when severe sickness comes, we are ready to die. Long buffeted by bleak, blue icebergs, we see at last with equanimity that we are sailing into Symmes's hole. The Nubian moonlight crept yellow along the wall, but the monotonous speech of the white-haired mystery went sounding on, like the faint far noise of the cataract below Philæ Otherwise nature were unkind. the slope, because she is ever gentle. She smooths For to turn But na us out of doors suddenly and unwillingly into the night, were worse than a cursing father. ture can never be as bad as man. What boots it that faith follows our going with a rush lantern, and hope totters before with a lucifer? Shrewd, sad eyes have scrutinized those lights, and whispered only, "It is the dancing of will-o'-the-wisps among the tombs." It is only the gift of nature that we die well, as that we are born well. It is nature that unawes death to us, and makes it welcome and pleasant as sleep. A mystery! But if you say that it is the dim dream of the future, wrought into the reality of faith, that smooths death-then that dream and faith are the devices of nature, like these enticing sculptures upon tomb avenues, to lead us gently down. For I find that all men are cheered by this dream, although its figures are as the men. There are gardens and houris, or hunting-grounds and exhaustless deer, or crystal cities where white-robed pilgrims sing hymns forever (howbeit after Egypt no philoso phic Howadji will hold that long white garments are of heaven). The flickering form waved a moment in the moonlight and resumed. Heaven is a hint of nature, and therein shall we feel how ever kind she is-opening the door of death into golden gloom, she points to the star that gilds it. She does this to all men, and in a thousand ways. But in all lands are seers who would monopolize the seeing-Bunyan pilots, sure you will ground in the gloom except you embark in their ship, and with their treatise of navigation. Meanwhile the earth has more years than are yet computed, and the Bunyan pilots are of the threescore and ten species. Priests and physicians agree, that at last all men die bravely, and we are glad to listen. O Howadji, that bravery was ours. We should be as brave as the hundred of any chance crowd, and so indirectly we know how we should die, even if, at some time, death has not looked closely at us over the shoulder, and said audibly what we knew-that he held the fee simple of our existence. The Nubian moonlight waned along the wall. We praise our progress, said the white-haired shadow, yet know no more than these Egyptians knew. We say that we feel we are happier, and |