A LIVING GOD

purlings of melody; — the bell-insects, the crickets, and the seven marvelous cicadas of summer would make all the wood of my ghost-house thrill to their musical storms. At times I would enter, like an ecstasy, into their tiny lives to quicken the joy of their clamor and to magnify the sonority of their song.

But I can never become a god, — for this is the nineteenth century; and nobody can be really aware of the nature of the sensations of a god — unless there are gods in the flesh. Are there? Perhaps — in very remote districts — one or two. There used to be living gods.

In ancient times, any man who did something extraordinarily great or good or wise or brave might be declared a god after his death, no matter how humble his condition in life. Also, good people who had suffered great cruelty and injustice might be apotheosized; and there still survives the popular inclination to pay posthumous honor and to pray to the spirits of those who die voluntary deaths under particular circumstances, — to the souls of unhappy lovers, for example. (Probably the old customs which made this ten-