They will take it for the insult of perfunctory honor, not for the
sympathy it assumes to be. _Nothing but good of the dead_, do you say?
_Nothing but truth of the dead_, we answer. _Do not disturb their bones;
let them rest easy at last_, is the commentary on all keen criticism of
those who have played important parts in life, and whose influence has
perhaps been a curse. No, we reply, their bones will rest easier, and
their benedictions come to us surer, for our unaffected plain-dealing.
The trick of flattery may succeed with the living. Those still in this
world of shadows, cross-lights, and glaring reflections may be caught by
the images we flash upon them from the mirrors of admiration we swing in
our hands. But they who have laid down all the shows of things with
their own superficial countenances and mortal frames cannot be imposed
upon by the faces of adulation we make up. They who listen to that other
speech, whose tones are the literally translated truth, cannot be
patient with the gloss and varnish of our, at best, imperfect language.
Let their awful presences shame and transfigure, terrify and transport
us, into reality of communication akin to their own! "I will express
myself in music to you," said a great composer to a bereft woman, as he
took his seat at the piano.
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