Page:Rideout--Beached keels.djvu/48

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34
BEACHED KEELS

of other men in all ages and countries,—their most serious thoughts, and far-reaching. I have not yet connected them with my own interpretation, or indeed arranged them in any orderly fashion."

Archer could hardly forbear to smile. But he had no such difficulty when he had once begun to read. Under the title stood a quotation,—

"So shalt thou feed on death, that feeds on men.
And death once dead, there 's no more dying then."

The other pages were a kind of nightmare hodge-podge, in neat manuscript, of mortuary fragments. A few he could recognize, many he could not. He read rapidly, with the assistance of his host, who turned the pages eagerly.

"Sancti Ambrosii: de Excessu Fratris Sui, Satyris, lib. i, 18.—Habeo plane pignus meum, quod nulla mihi peregrinatio jam possit avellere: habeo quas complectar, reliquias: habeo tumulum, quem corpore tegam: habeo sepulcrum, super quod jaceam."

"Life is like traveling backward in a cart; we see only what has passed and is moving away from us."