A Dead Man's Diary by Coulson Kernahan

"Of all these mysteries there is none which fills me with such abject / horror and dread as the mystery of 'the dead who die. " / "Through many days they toil; then comes a day / They die not, -- never having lived, -- but cease; / And round their narrow lips the mould falls close. " / _Rossetti_ -- "The Choice. "

It may occur to those of my readers who have neglected to bear in mind the concluding words of Chapter VIII., that notwithstanding the remorse which I have pictured myself as suffering in Hades, I do not appear to have been altogether indifferent to the consolations of social intercourse, and that existence in the Unseen, as represented in the pages of this diary, would seem to consist largely of conversation between the "spirits in prison. " But because I have confined myself in my last three chapters to the relation of such facts in regard to the condition of others, as, either through observation or conversation, came to my knowledge in the course of my singular experiences, it must not be supposed that my own sufferings had in any way ceased. What those sufferings were as described by me in my sixth chapter, they continued to be during the whole of the time in which it was ordained that I should remain in Hades, and each of the conversations here recorded took place during that comparatively painless interval of which I have elsewhere spoken, and was separated from the conversation preceding or following it by a space of terrible pain. With which necessary reminder I pass on to tell of "the dead who die."