"Hardly, I think.

I have, alas! stood by many a death-bed; for I am too often sent for when Death is already beckoning the sick man away.

I have met thousands of mourners in these melancholy scenes, which, I can assure you, are the very best school for training any one who desires to search the hearts of his fellow-creatures.

By the bed of death, or in the mart, where everything is a question of Mine and Thine, it is easy to see how some--we for instance--are as careful to hide from the world all that is great and noble in us as others are to conceal what is petty and mean--we read men's hearts as an open page.

From my observations of the dying and of those who sorrow for them, I, who am not Menander not Lucian, could draw a series of portraits which should be as truthful likenesses as though the men had turned themselves inside out before me." "That a dying man should show himself as he really is I can well believe," replied Paula.