The page of an obituary may accidentally inform us how long one of them lingered on the bed of sickness, and by what death he died.

Some we may perhaps discover in elevated situations, from which worldly pride might probably prevent their stooping down to recognise us.

Others, immersed in the labyrinths of business, have forgot all, in the selfish pursuits of earthly accumulation.

While the rest, the children of misfortune and disappointment, we may occasionally find out amid the great multitude of the streets, to whom life is but a desert of sorrow, and against whom prosperity seems to have shut for ever her golden gates.
Such are the diversities of condition, the varieties of fortune to which man is exposed, while climbing the hill of probationary difficulty.

And how sublimely applicable are the words of Job, expatiating on the uncertainty of human existence: "Man dieth and wasteth away; yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?
As the waters fail from the sea, and the flood decayeth and drieth up; so man lieth down and riseth not till the heavens be no more." While standing on the same spot, where of yore the boyish multitude congregated in pursuit of their eager sports, a silent awe steals over the bosom, and the heart desponds at the thought, that all these once smiling faces are scattered now! Some, mayhap, tossing on the waste and perilous seas; some the merchants of distant lands; some fighting the battles of their country; others dead--inhabitants of the dark and narrow house, and hearing no more the billows of life, that thunder and break above their low and lonely dwelling-place! * * * * * Nanse, who was sitting by the table, knitting a pair of light-blue worsted stockings for Benjie, and myself, who was sewing on the buttons of a velveteen jacket for a country lad, were, I must say, not a little delighted, not only with the way in which the Welshman's late master had spoken of his school-fellows, but with the manner in which James Batter, with his specs on, had read it over to us.