The Shasta courier., 1862-11-15
The Sletanorphoses Of Matter.

Lady, word with you. You are as great
as great can be. and /, what am {? Nobody.
Nobody l smile the Scytheman smiles.
Nobody! Yes, am q body, or have q
body, put the case as you will. Lady. calmly
let US see what will become of your body, and
what will become of my body.
When you die, some fashionable undertak-
er will solder your $50 pounds of bone and
blood and flesh into a leaden coffin, and pack
the leaden coffin away into another coffin,
decking the second ont xith-v6lyet and gew-
gaws as befts your sYSssice ss1on. Then
not hold you. The cloistered charnel is your
resting place, there to defy all elemental
change ge-braving dissolution.
Alas, my lady, if you could but see, as
by the light of chemistry can see, that tester
ing wreck of poisonous corruption seething
within that leaden box of yours in twelve
of dissolving harmlessly into thin air, or
crumbling little by little to mother earth,
thence passing into trees and flowers, a part
of their very being, the elements of your
body will have fretted to poisonous COM
free, as some day it must, will speed about
PCoSnCuC0> 4uCAO MV ovoA0hoA
the common lot, my lady, mono. Ashes to ash.
shall it be Material elements know their des-
tiny, and must follow it. To move on, com.
bining and recombining, idle never, that is
their destiny: and-typical enough Of what
we see in life if their energies b restrain.
ed, if honest fields Of energy be barred, they
take to mischief.
Your $50 pounds (more or less) of bodily
material are only lent, my lady, held on the
frailest of tenures. They are not freehold,
nor even leasehold. The holding Is not year.
ly, monthly, weekly not even daily. Asleep
or awake, Dame Nature puts her physical
forces into possession, and takes your very
substance in kind every moment of your ex-
istence, and when the God of nature dis
patches death to garner in the fruits of disso-
luton, think you TO escape the common lot
Oh, no, my lady. Ashes to ashes, dust to
dust thus is it written, and thus must it be.
Fair one, this much of you, a now of ME.
When die, plain elm coffin awaits me, and
that for decency sake. Nobody will deem it
worth the while to solder me up in lead or
pewter Living humanity will have had
enough of me: my elements will be free to
pass on. And the spirit-if spirit it be that
thinks within me now-would never trouble
any one who helped the dissolution, liberat-
ing the elements by some process more rapid
than decay. 1t matters not, save for the sen.
timent ofit-but sentiment may be the spirit
life within, for aught we know-it matters
not, but fancy mine would be an unhappy
gi ost. could it but look down-or up, as the
case might be-and contemplate the noxious
forms that matter can assume whilst striving
to be useful according to its destiny. This
even when no repressive agency is at work,
the grave willing, aye ready, to resi- its
burden, nature caressingly Turing the pure
elements struggling from corruption to join
in her lifelong revelry of change and travel,
dance and rout-a life long masquerade.
The nitrogen of my substance-nature wants
it: she will make ammonia of it, and, as
smelling salts, would not ghost looking on
be grat.fied to see the pungent salt. in cris
tai bottle, nestled in the soft recess of Ia
dy's bosom, OF warming her delicate nose !?
Ay, and think of my carbon too what desti
nies await it Drffusing sweet odors, per-
haps, from the petals of rose. Tended
gently by fair hands, helping to make up
floral love token: why not? In some form
of life and action my carbon must be pass
ing on. Many years must roll by, and ma
nv an accident of food and field must happen,
ere that element would be likely to find
resting PLACE awhile in pitcoal, limestone,
marble, charcoal, or the diamond as one
who, tired of dancing or the chase, has gone
to sleep awhile, waiting for the dawn. And
yet psrchance it might happen sooner than
assumed. The charcoal burned might lop
off some wooden stem in which the carbon of
my dissolution was busy at life work. Char
coal, next to its fair allotropic sister. the di
amond, is perhaps the most indistructible
thing in creation, natures slow agencies
alone regarded. Century after century wa
ter can flow over it, without effecting one
touch of dissolution. Wheathe free in the
air or buried in the earth, charcoal never de-
Gays. Touched by fire, charcoal wakes out
of its resting sleep; indeed, assumes an in.
visible form, and fleets about ready for other
duties. More lasting is the diamond, though
far from meriting 6he designation, adamds
which formerly it won. Heat them enough,
and diamonds burn, vanishing into thin air
Can my disembodied spirit ever hope to see
the carbon elements of that bodily frame
which yielded her up in death, gIittering,
consolidated, transformed into the most beau
t;fnl of all onms p-Tc,nn7e Ror 49,