"And this," said I, with my mind full of what I had witnessed--"this, I presume, is your usual form of burial ?" "Our invariable form," answered Aph-Lin.

"What is it amongst your people ?" "We inter the body whole within the earth." "What! To degrade the form you have loved and honoured, the wife on whose breast you have slept, to the loathsomeness of corruption ?" "But if the soul lives again, can it matter whether the body waste within the earth or is reduced by that awful mechanism, worked, no doubt by the agency of vril, into a pinch of dust ?" "You answer well," said my host, "and there is no arguing on a matter of feeling; but to me your custom is horrible and repulsive, and would serve to invest death with gloomy and hideous associations.

It is something, too, to my mind, to be able to preserve the token of what has been our kinsman or friend within the abode in which we live.

We thus feel more sensibly that he still lives, though not visibly so to us.

But our sentiments in this, as in all things, are created by custom.