And as, musing, I moved away from the appalling scene, the thought rushed into my mind that perhaps my experience of a few moments might be that of the soul when entering upon the sublimities of the future state. Hence my theory, which may go for what it is worth, or, as the Yankees would say, is 'good for what it will bring.'
Reader, do you never feel an intense longing to live over again the scenes of your youth? to begin at some certain period long gone by, and taste again the sweets that have passed away forever? It is one of the bitterest feelings of the heart that years are slipping away from us one by one; that the delights of our youth have gone, never to return, and that we 'shall not look upon their like again;' that the days are fast coming on when we shall say we have no pleasure in them, and that we are rapidly verging upon the 'lean and slippered pantaloon.' Were there any future rejuvenation, when we might stand again upon the threshold of life and look over its fair fields with all the joy and hope of anticipation, old age would lose all its dreariness, and become but a brief though painful pilgrimage through which we were to pass to joy beyond. But since this can never be, old age is the rust which dims the brightness of every earthly joy, and is looked forward to by youth only with a shudder.
Hundreds of bold and daring navigators have left their bones to whiten amid the snows and ice of the arctic regions, lured thither by the thirst of fame or of knowledge, in the pursuit of science, and in search of the Northwest Passage. But suppose some more fortunate adventurer should discover there, even at the very pole itself, a veritable 'fountain of youth and beauty,' whose rejuvenating waters could restore the elasticity of youth to the frame of age, smoothing away its wrinkles, and imprinting the bloom of childhood upon its cheeks, bringing back the long-lost freshness and buoyancy to the soul; would not the navigators of those dangerous seas be multiplied in the ratio of a million to one? Should we not all become Ponce de Leons, braving every danger, submitting to every privation, sacrificing wealth, fame, everything, in quest of the precious boon? What a hecatomb of mouldering bones would bestrew those fields of ice! For though not one in ten thousand might reach the promised goal, the hegira would still go on till the end of time, each deluded mortal hoping that he might be that happy, fortunate one. As the dying millionnaire would give all that he possesses for one moment of time, so would all mankind throw every present blessing into the scale, in the hope of drawing the prize in that great lottery.