round to the back of the mausoleum, your Eye-
witness came suddenly upon a semi-official looking
man, who had the appearance of something
between a river steamer ticket-collector and a
diver out of work, and who was entangling himself
with some very hooky drags at the back of
the building, near to a suspicious shed, which
looked like a dead-house. Heaven! by what
break-ladders, by what deadly implements,
by what coils of rope, by what sledges of
deliverance, was this man not surrounded! The
engines that rescue you from death — as surgeons'
instruments, hospital appurtenances, life-boats,
drags, and ice-tackle — are as terrible to look on
as the apparatus of death itself.

The man who had been coiling drag-ropes,
upon being questioned by the E.-W. as to when
he could look over the inside of the mausoleum,
suggested that he could "throw his eye over it"
now, if he liked, and if he did not mind the faintness
of the light. There was light enough for all
that the Eye-witness wanted to see, and there
was even something in the approach of twilight
that made the notion of penetrating into this
tomb — where men are saved from the tomb—
additionally attractive. Your Eye-witness
advanced to the front entrance, and the ex-iceman
went round to the back, to let him in.

The first sounds that reached the writer's
ears as he entered the building, were sounds of
music, and of children's voices, singing some
touching melody. The superintendent lived
there, the iceman said—"the superintendent
lived there and his family, and the children were
singing, as they did most evenings."

There was the room, there was the bath,
the bed! All smaller, of course, than the
Eye-witness recollected them, but all in the
same position as they were fifteen years ago.
There was the other room, where the man had
sat, reading the book about shipwrecks. There
were the printed directions for the recovery of
the apparently drowned, hanging against the wall,
and there was the Society's device of the child
blowing at the extinguished torch, with the motto
round it. It chanced that your Eye-witness
was left alone in this room, for, having expressed
a wish to possess a copy of the last-printed
Report of the Royal Humane Society, the ex-
iceman had to go round to the back of the
premises to get it. He went out at the front
door of the building; it closed behind him with
a great crash; and the Eye-witness was left the
only occupant of the place. The children, in a
part of the building shut off from the rest, were
still singing to a simple air played on a piano,
the darkness was gathering about the walls, and
the visitor sat down upon a chair by the side of
the bed in which he had once passed a winter's
afternoon.

What anxious hearts had beaten in this place
What faces, pale with suspense, had gathered,
perhaps, round this very bed, as some one linked
to those who looked on, by ties of blood, lay
there, with glazed eyes, and with the foam upon
his lips! And the sufferer himself, his body
resenting the revival going on within it, writhing
and convulsed under the newly stirring life—
the sufferer himself, with the machinery of his
existence labouring so hard in its efforts to
recommence the functions which had stopped, it
seemed just now, for ever!

And then, how soon forgotten! The life, the
precious trust, given back to him again to be
misused, as soon as it was regained. The
escape, how soon forgotten by him who
sustained it, as well as by the friends who stood
around.

How soon forgotten! How soon was the
rescue experienced by the writer of these words,
scattered out of his mind to give place to trifles.
How soon is the Magdalen forgetful of her fall,
and once more thoughtful about the tying of
her hair and the fit of her dress. How soon is
the widow attentive to her mourning, and anxious
about the judicious crimping of her cap. "To
the grave with the dead, and the living to the
bread," is still the cry to-day, as it was in the
time of Cervantes.

And, indeed, it must be so. In the room
itself, there was as great a combination of
the grave and the trifling, as elsewhere. On
the lid which covered the hot bath in which
the dead-alive is placed, was laid a woman's
half-finished dress of a gay and brilliant pattern,
a perambulator was perched upon one of the
beds, and the children in the adjoining compartment
of the house had begun to sing a comic
negro melody.

The door opened again with a sounding crash.
The ex-iceman returned with the Report, and the
Eye-witness passing out into the empty park,
looked once again to where the elms grow tall
about the pond at Kensington, and thought
of what had happened to him there as he
walked homeward, and as the darkness of the
longest night in the year dropped down upon the
earth.

THE GOLDEN YEAR.

COME, sunny looks, that in my memory throng;
Come! bringing back some happy afternoon;
Come! for your gentle presence is the song
Without which Nature hums a lonely tune.
Oh, light feet, tread the narrow path once more;
Come to my cry, fair forms, and, resting near,
On the dear rocks where you have sat before,
A little while renew the golden year.

Come to this spot, whence we so oft have viewed
The gleam of waves, rock-broken, round the bay,
Come once more, or wild grasses will intrude,
And clasp their hands across the narrow way;
Come, for the place is fair as land of dream,
And, through the rushes, winds hum mournfully,
As if just moved in slumber, and the stream
Still struggles through its cresses to the sea.

'Tis vain to call; I once the strain have heard,
That lacked no note to make the tune complete,
Once, wakened by the touch of some kind word,
I found a garden fair, with flowers sweet;
There, plucking fruits from many a drooping bough,
I stayed, untroubled by foreboding doubt;
Once have I passed the golden year, and now
I see it far back, like a star going out.