We spoke of some illustrations of this, the scene before us lending atmosphere and suggestion to the talk, and enforcing it like nature's comment. "But," I continued, "what I had in mind to say was concerning our dead selves. The old phrase, _life is a continual dying_, is true, and, once gone life is death; and sometimes so much of it has been gathered to the past, such definite portions of it are laid away, that we can look, if we will, in the lake of memory on the faces of the dead selves which once we were." Instinctively we looked on the mystic glamour in the low valley, as on that Lake of the Dead Souls I spoke of. I went on after the natural pause,--I could not help it,--"'I was a different man, then,' we say, with a touch of sadness, perhaps, but often with better thoughts, and always with a feeling of mystery. How old is the youth before he is aware of the fading away of vitality out of early beliefs? and then he feels the quick passing of the enthusiasms of opening life, as one cause after another, one hero, one poet, disclosing the great interests of life, in turn engages his heart. As time goes on, and life comes out in its true perspective, one thing with another, and he discovers the incompleteness of single elements of ardour in the whole of life, and also the defects of wisdom, art, and action in those books and men that had won his full confidence and what he called perfect allegiance, there comes often a moment of pause, as if this growth had in it some thing irrational and derogatory. The thinkers whose words of light and leading were the precious truth itself, the poets he idolized, the elders he trusted, fall away, and others stand in their places, who better appeal to his older mind, his finer impulses, his sounder judgment; and what true validity can these last have in the end? After a decade he can almost see his youth as something dead, his early manhood as something that will die. The poet, especially, who gives expression to himself, and puts his life at its period into a book, feels, as each work drops from his hand, that it is a portion of a self that is dead, though it was life in the making; and so with the embodiments of life in action, the man looks back on past greatness, past romance; for all life, working itself out--desire into achievement--dies to the man. Vital life lies always before. It is a strange thought that only by the death of what we now are, can we enter into our own hopes and victories; that it is by the slaying of the self which now is that the higher self takes life; that it is through such self-destruction that we live. The intermediate state seems a waste, and the knowledge that it is intermediate seems to impair its value; but this is the way ordained by which we must live, and such is life's magic that in each stage, from childhood to age, it is lived with trustfulness in itself. It is needful only, however much we outlive, to live more and better, and through all to remain true to the high causes, the faithful loves, the sacred impulses, that have given our imperfect life of the past whatever of nobility it may have; so shall death forever open into life. But," I ended, lifting my moist eyes toward the sweep of the dark slopes, "the wind blows, and leaves the mystic to inquire whence and whither, the wild shrub blossoms and only the poet is troubled to excuse its beauty, and happy is he who can live without too much thought of life."