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Something like this is reported of the Hervey Islands, New Zealand, the Hawaiians, and other tribes. Among the wild tribes of India, the Khonds and the Oraons, or Dhangars, hold to annihilation of the soul in certain cases. Miss Kingsley reports a specially interesting view in Congo to the effect that souls die when the family dies out.
What, I whose pulse now beats so strongly! whose blood keeps so warm and vigorous a motion! in the very prime of enjoyment and manhood; all life's million paths of pleasure before me, to die, to swing to the winds, to hang, ay, ay to hang! to be cut down, distorted and hideous; to be thrust into the earth with worms; to rot, or or or hell! is there a hell? better that even than annihilation!"
Apart from that, he had but one thought: to complete his written appeal to the benign powers who, traversing the haunted wood, might some time rescue him if he should be denied the blessing of annihilation.
Everything, therefore, seemed to be leading up to but one inevitable end the ruin and devastation of the Hindu provinces; the annihilation of their old royal houses, the destruction of their religion, their temples, their cities. All that the dwellers in the south held most dear seemed tottering to its fall.
Not only did he find himself as poor a man as in that hateful stage of his existence to remember which was a dull dead pain even to him but a man infinitely more heavily burdened. He had made for himself a certain position, and the fall from that must needs be a cruel and damaging fall, the utter annihilation of all his chances in life.
Here the resolution remains unshaken amid all the terrors of annihilation; the man perishes but his principles survive; there the corporeal existence remains, but the sentiments suffer an instantaneous change.
The Romans prevailed, and Alaric was in imminent peril of annihilation, but was saved by the too confident spirit of Stilicho, and his indulgence in the pleasures of the degenerate Greeks.
He would not cheat at cards because it was dangerous and ungentlemanlike, and if discovered would lead to his social annihilation; but as to paying money that he owed to tradesmen, it never occurred to him as being a desirable thing as long as he could get what he wanted without doing so.
Could annihilation occur to matter, this were the thing to do it. Nor does this its amazing strength, at all tend to cripple the graceful flexion of its motions; where infantileness of ease undulates through a Titanism of power. On the contrary, those motions derive their most appalling beauty from it.
And though, always good humoredly, he tested its powers and loaded his guests with princely gifts, yet he rested night after night more uneasily upon his pillow, remembering the solemn words of the geist: "The day you part with it your portion shall be ashes, and mine annihilation." One day, after the space of a year, there came to the woodchopper's door a captain from far-off lands.
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