The North-Eastern Weekly Gazette. — 1883-10-13 (Stockton-on-Tees, Cleveland, England)

CARLYLE IN HADES.  I died in the latter part of the past year 1882.  What I am about to relate has so little to do with myself that I don't think it needful to enter inta details concerning that event. It is astonishing how much less largely it bulks in importance when one regards it in the past instead of the future tense. This, I have remarked, is a usual result of human experience. We continue to be greatly interested in those who have gone through the same vicissitudes, but familiarity lessens our respect for every event that has happened to ourselves. To a man who has committed a murder, for instance, the fact that he has done it takes away a great deal of its strangeness, so that he is disposed to wonder why other people should make such a fuss about a thing which, after all, is not so unusual. Death comes under the same law; there is nothing to be excited about, we think, when it is over; after all, it is only one in a multiplicity of events. I came to the place I am about to describe, after having gone through various preliminaries unnecessary to dwell upon. It was, I believe, the fact that I belonged to the literary profession that determined my going in that special , direction.  in Scotland is called a plaid, and in which this guardian of the flock can carry a lamb when nand is. He came in with a smiling air of one who is used to setting everything right, and laid his hand npon my companion's arm. "What in going wrong ?" he said. " When you quote • Scripture at this rate, and fume and march about (for the first speaker had been pacing the hall back and forward), there is evidently need of Me. Dearest fellow, what is going wrong?' At this my friend gave him a keen, humorous look from under his eyebrows, and, with a laugh which broke out of the solemnity of his very strangely, retired to his seat air.in, &left the new corner in possession of the field. Ha was a smooth, ready, vivacious personage, vary well known, indeed, in the places whence I had come; the change of costume was more striking in him than it had been in the others. Hem* me a smile and a white hand. "The prophet always vehement," he said, with a glance aside as if he and I had a mutual undefstanding Os this subject, and comprehended our friend better than he did himself. "You are speaking. at course, of the biography? Very curious, very curious, my dear sir, the manner in which ws are dealt with after we go. It is a kind of refined infidelity; nothing better; quite natur4 you know, in our friend's legatee, but not at an natural in that dearest boy of mine, whose training was so different. It betrays a certain conviction that they are never to see us again, which is a mistake in every way. This will make it awkward for them when they come after us, more awkward than it had any need to be; awkward in their own feelings," said the shepherd, rubbing his hands; "though in our bosom no offence dwells." "Yes, your lordship," said the other from his chair. "Ye are just as badly treated as the real I of us, and have made sport for the Philistines. I too."  S • • • Here we were interrupted by the entrance of s shaggy figure, with which I had been very familiar in the prelimivary life. He was a large frame of a man, but had never been filled out or extended by such bodily exercise as his race required; and though his cheek had never lost the rustic red nor his mind the uncompromising expressions of a peasant, he had stooped and shambled somewhat, so far as concerned the outer man, in his mortal days. He seemed to me to have added a cubit (if I knew much that was) to his stature, and the development of his phy-sicial organs had cleared up the cloudy face full of laughter yet of storms, with its frequent flush of wrath and those burets of vituperation which always ended in the deep rumble of a volcanic laugh. It had not become a peaceful face even now, but was subject to