Men seldom think of the great event of death until the shadows fall across their own path, hiding forever from their eyes the traces of loved ones, whose living smiles were the sunlight of their existence. Death is the great antagonist of life, and the bold thought of the tomb is the skeleton of all feasts. We do not want to go through the dark valley, although its passage may lead to paradise; and with Charles Lamb we do not want to lay down in the muddy grave, even with kings and princes for our bed-fellows. But the fiat of nature is inexorable. There is no appeal from the great law which dooms us to dust. We flourish and fade as the leaves of the forest; and the flowers that bloom and within in a day have not a frailer hope upon life than the mightiest monarch that ever shook the earth with his footsteps. Generations of men appear and vanish as the grass, and the countless multitude which fills the world to-day will disappear as the footsteps on the shore.
– Published in The Cedar Falls Gazette, Cedar Falls, Iowa, Friday, April 11, 1862, p. 1
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