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86 when the water flies his lips. Also, if you look close, you will see the Fates too hovering over them, each with her spindle, whence are drawn slender threads which are attached to all.

Charon compares human life to the bubbles which rise and float along the stream—some small, which quickly burst and disappear; some larger, which attract others in their course, and so grow larger still, but which soon break also in their turn, and vanish into nothing; and Mercury assures him that his comparison is quite as good as Homer's celebrated one of the leaves on the trees. It puzzles him also to discover what there is in this life so very desirable, that men should so take the loss of it to heart; and he would fain himself take a journey to earth, and preach wisdom to these miserable mortals, to warn them to "cease from vanity, and live with death ever before their eyes. 'O fools!' I would say to them, 'why are ye anxious about such little things? Cease from thus wearying yourselves; ye cannot live for eyer: none of those things ye so admire is everlasting, nor can a man carry aught of it away with him when he dies, but naked he must depart below; and house and lands and gold must change their master, and pass into other hands.

But all such preaching, Mercury assures him, would be in vain. Their ears are so fast stopped with error and ignorance, that no surgeon's instrument can bore them. What Lethe does for the dead, obstinacy does