Page:Dealings with the dead.djvu/88

 to find one's drafts dishonored at the counters of the world above. Suicides and voluptuaries are on an equality up there. Both are only half-men, half-children, half-women; nor can they taste of the higher raptures, unless they grow to holiness. After a while there ceased to be any more pictures, and I became aware of the fact that an unseen force was at work on the outside of the globe, evidently endeavoring to break it down, or in some way force a passage through its walls. What this something could be, was a mystery, just so long as I vehemently desired to know, which of course I, like others under similar circumstances, did. I could not, while thus endeavoring, obtain my desire, and therefore I naturally began to wish that Nellie or the old man would come, because, in spite of my matchless surroundings, I felt quite human in the midst of Spirituality, and the sight even of another than myself would have been a solace and a consolation. No sooner had my mind placed itself upon a new object, than I made two new and important discoveries: First, that loneliness or solitude is one of the most terrible punishments to which either God or man could ever possibly condemn a sinful human being. God pity the lonely man or woman! O, it is very dreadful to be compelled to exist alone!—and there are thousands who walk the great world's streets, who move along in the very midst of a Solitude, as deep, silent and fearful as that which prevails in Zahara's desert wastes, where human footfalls never disturb the awful stillness of the hour There are those who travel up and down the world's highways, upon whose soul no glad Hounds ever fall, and who appear to be condemned