If he hit one of the former, he concluded that his father--who was gone to Osiris--concurred in his design; in the contrary case he was careful to postpone it.

Often he pressed the ring to his heart, and awaited the first living creature that he might meet, regarding it as a messenger from his father;--if it came to him from the right hand as an encouragement, if from the left as a warning.
By degrees he had reduced these questionings to a system.

All that he found in nature he referred to himself and the current of his life.

It was at once touching, and pitiful, to see how closely he lived with the Manes of his dead.

His lively, but not exalted fancy, wherever he gave it play, presented to the eye of his soul the image of his father and of an elder brother who had died early, always in the same spot, and almost tangibly distinct.
But he never conjured up the remembrance of the beloved dead in order to think of them in silent melancholy--that sweet blossom of the thorny wreath of sorrow; only for selfish ends.