Cec. I have a figure of Death in my fable-book. I suppose that is emblematical?
Pa. Certainly, or you could not know that it meant Death. How is it represented?
Cec. He is nothing but bones, and he holds a scythe in one hand, and an hour-glass in the other.
Pa. Well—how do you interpret these emblems?
Cec. I suppose he is all bones, because nothing but bones are left after a dead body has lain long in the grave.
Pa. True. This, however, is not so properly an emblem, as the real and visible effect of death. But the scythe?
Cec. Is not that because death mows down everything?
Pa. It is. No instrument could so properly represent the wide-wasting sway of death, which sweeps down the race of animals like flowers falling under the hands of the mower. It is a simile used in the Scriptures.
Cec. The hour-glass, I suppose, is to show people their time is come.
Pa. Right. In the hour-glass that Death holds, all the sand is run out from the upper to the lower part. Have you never observed upon a monument an old figure, with wings, and a scythe, and with his head bald all but a single lock before?