ITT: Post passages from books that are super cool

[Eulogy]

He listened hard for a few minutes and realized that Doyle was making no attempt to be understood. He was giving birth to groups of words that lived inside of him as things, a jumble of retorts he had meant to make when insulted and the private curses against fate that experience had taught him to swallow.

from Nathanael West's Miss Lonelyhearts.

finding shit like this is why i love reading sometimes.

[Future Boy]

all I read is netphoria, so:

Originally Posted by sickbadthing

Then he pulled his cock out slightly and began thrusting into my mouth, ignoring the fact that I was choking. If I struggled against his thrusts, he would hold his cock deep in my throat for a longer period of time. Only allowing me air if I stopped fighting him. No sounds, grunts or words came from him as he fucked my mouth but the whole time, I felt his eyes burning into me.

[Eulogy]

aw. someone has to make a serious reply.

[samuel redman]

where the red fern gorws made me cry years ago

[Eulogy]

WELL FIND THE PASSAGE THAT MADE YOU CRY AND POST PART OF IT

jesus people aren't we on the internet

[ravenguy2000]

i've read some pretty good things lately but my books are in the car.

the only thing sitting near me is

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/...SH20_OU01_.jpg

but this does not exactly lend itself to short meaningful blurbs

[TheMilstead]

Aleister Crowley - The Book of the Law

29. For I am divided for love's sake, for the chance of union.

30. This is the creation of the world, that the pain of division is as nothing, and the joy of dissolution all.

31. For these fools of men and their woes care not thou at all! They feel little; what is, is balanced by weak joys; but ye are my chosen ones.

32. Obey my prophet! follow out the ordeals of my knowledge! seek me only! Then the joys of my love will redeem ye from all pain. This is so: I swear it by the vault of my body; by my sacred heart and tongue; by all I can give, by all I desire of ye all.

[Eulogy]

well at least someone posted something.

thank you michael milstead

[samuel redman]

can anybody help with my really bad gas

[duovamp]

And so, unless with those mediating, we cannot conceive that God rules over human beings and directs human affairs in accordance with justice and equity: this is also proved by experience itself. For no traces of divine justice are found except where just men rule. Otherwise (if I might repeat Solomon's words once again) we see that the same fate happens to the just and the unjust, the pure and the impure: this has made very many doubt divine providence who deemed that God rules over human beings immediately and directs the whole of nature for their use.

[redbreegull]

Dawn was breaking over everything in colours at once clear and timid; as if Nature made a first attempt at yellow and a first attempt at rose. A breeze blew so clean and sweet, that one would not think that it blew from the sky; it blew rather through some hole in the sky. Syme felt a simple surprise when he saw rising all round him on both sides of the road the red, irregular buildings of Saffron Park. He had no idea that he had walked so near London. He walked by instinct along one white road, on which early birds hopped and sang, and found himself outside a fenced garden. There he saw the sister of Gregory, the girl with the gold-red hair, cutting lilac before breakfast, with the great unconscious gravity of a girl.

From The Man Who Was Thursday, by G.K. Chesterton

[redbreegull]

REDMAN GET OUT OF THIS THREAD YOU FUCKER

[Eulogy]

this author came to talk to us last week and spent like 20 minutes jizzing all over chesterton.

he was pretty cool though. he wrote a "young adult" novel.

[murgle]

I just started another David Sedaris book. But it's far away and I only just started it. I got nothin. Useless post.

[redbreegull]

I guess Chesterton is most well known for his catholic apologetic stuff or some shit. He was a devout religious nut. The Man Who Was Thursday is an amazing book though.

[D.]

For some reason, I find the following passage really depressing:

Originally Posted by Tobias Wolff in "Two Boys and a Girl" short story from The Night in Question

Rafe was moving on. He didn't know it, but he was leaving them behind. He'd have roommates, guys from rich families, who'd invite him home for vacation, take him skiing, sailing. He'd wear a tuxedo for debutante parties where he'd meet girls from Smith and Mount Holyoke, philosophy majors, English majors, girls with ideas who were reading the same books he was reading and other books, too, who could say things he wouldn't have exepcted them to say. He'd get interested in one of these girls and go on road trips with his friends to her college. She'd come to New Haven. They'd rendezvous in Boston and New York. He'd meet her parents. And on the first day of his next trip home, honorable Rafe would enter Mary Ann's house and leave half an hour later with a sorrowful face and heart leaping with joy. There wouldn't be many more trips home, not after that. What was there to bring him all that way?

[Trotskilicious]

Originally Posted by Gabriel Garcia Marquez in The Autumn of the Patriarch

[...]one January afternoon we had seen a cow contemplating the sunset from the presidential balcony, just imagine, a cow on the balcony of the nation, what an awful thing, what a shitty country, and all sorts of conjectures were made about how it was possible for a cow to get onto a balcony since everybody knew that cows can't climb stairs, and even less carpeted ones, so in the end we never knew if we had really seen it[...]

lol

[Trotskilicious]

someone else find the rolling books recently read thread for me because i dun red sum boox

[topleybird]

I just finished The Man Who Was Thursday two days ago, wtf redbreegull

Originally Posted by Raymond Chandler's The Lady in the Lake

I put the liquor bottle away and went over to the washbowl to rinse the glass out. When I had done that I washed my hands and bathed my face in cold water and looked at it. The flush was gone from the left cheek, but it looked a little swollen. Not very much, but enough to make me tighten up again. I brushed my hair and looked at the grey in it. There was getting to be plenty of grey in it. The face under the hair had a sick look. I didn't like the face at all.

I went back to the desk and read Miss Fromsett's note again. I smoothed it out on the glass and sniffed it and smoothed it out some more and folded it and put it in my coat pocket.

I sat very still and listened to the evening grow quiet outside the open windows. And very slowly I grew quiet with it.

Originally Posted by Phil Dick's Valis

I am Horselover Fat, and I am writing this in the third person to gain much-needed objectivity.

[chapter goes on for quite a while, and ends with the following]

By thinking about madness, Horselover Fat slipped by degrees into madness.

I wish I could have helped him.

[Deadeyes]

An Answer to the Question: “What is Enlightenment?”
Immanuel Kant

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude!1 “Have courage to use your own understanding!” — that is the motto of enlightenment. ¶

Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (naturaliter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts. ¶

Thus, it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all but become his nature. He has even become fond of this state and for the time being is actually incapable of using his own understanding, for no one has ever allowed him to attempt it. Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are the shackles of a permanent immaturity. Whoever threw them off would still make only an uncertain leap over the smallest ditch, since he is unaccustomed to this kind of free movement. Consequently, only a few have succeeded, by cultivating their own minds, in freeing themselves from immaturity and pursuing a secure course. ¶

But that the public should enlighten itself is more likely; indeed, if it is only allowed freedom, enlightenment is almost inevitable. For even among the entrenched guardians of the great masses a few will always think for themselves, a few who, after having themselves thrown off the yoke of immaturity, will spread the spirit of a rational appreciation for both their own worth and for each person’s calling to think for himself. But it should be particularly noted that if a public that was first placed in this yoke by the guardians is suitably aroused by some of those who are altogether incapable of enlightenment, it may force the guardians themselves to remain under the yoke—so pernicious is it to instill prejudices, for they finally take revenge upon their originators, or on their descendants. Thus a public can only attain enlightenment slowly. Perhaps a revolution can overthrow autocratic despotism and profiteering or power-grabbing oppression, but it can never truly reform a manner of thinking; instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones they replace, will serve as a leash for the great unthinking mass. ¶

Nothing is required for this enlightenment, however, except freedom; and the freedom in question is the least harmful of all, namely, the freedom to use reason publicly in all matters. But on all sides I hear: “Do not argue!” The officer says, “Do not argue, drill!” The tax man says, “Do not argue, pay!” The pastor says, “ Do not argue, believe!” (Only one ruler in the World says, “Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!”) In this we have examples of pervasive restrictions on freedom. But which restriction hinders enlightenment and which does not, but instead actually advances it? I reply: The public use of one’s reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among mankind; the private use of reason may, however, often be very narrowly restricted, without otherwise hindering the progress of enlightenment. By the public use of one’s own reason I understand the use that anyone as a scholar makes of reason before the entire literate world. I call the private use of reason that which a person may make in a civic post or office that has been entrusted to him. Now in many affairs conducted in the interests of a community, a certain mechanism is required by means of which some of its members must conduct themselves in an entirely passive manner so that through an artificial unanimity the government may guide them toward public ends, or at least prevent them from destroying such ends. Here one certainly must not argue, instead one must obey. However, insofar as this part of the machine also regards himself as a member of the community as a whole, or even of the world community, and as a consequence addresses the public in the role of a scholar, in the proper sense of that term, he can most certainly argue, without thereby harming the affairs for which as a passive member he is partly responsible. Thus it would be disastrous if an officer on duty who was given a command by his superior were to question the appropriateness or utility of the order. He must obey. But as a scholar he cannot be justly constrained from making comments about errors in military service, or from placing them before the public for its judgment. The citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes imposed on him; indeed, impertinent criticism of such levies, when they should be paid by him, can be punished as a scandal (since it can lead to widespread insubordination). But the same person does not act contrary to civic duty when, as a scholar, he publicly expresses his thoughts regarding the impropriety or even injustice of such taxes. Likewise a pastor is bound to instruct his catecumens and congregation in accordance with the symbol of the church he serves, for he was appointed on that condition. But as a scholar he has complete freedom, indeed even the calling, to impart to the public all of his carefully considered and well-intentioned thoughts concerning mistaken aspects of that symbol, as well as his suggestions for the better arrangement of religious and church matters. Nothing in this can weigh on his conscience. What he teaches in consequence of his office as a servant of the church he sets out as something with regard to which he has no discretion to teach in accord with his own lights; rather, he offers it under the direction and in the name of another. He will say, “Our church teaches this or that and these are the demonstrations it uses.” He thereby extracts for his congregation all practical uses from precepts to which he would not himself subscribe with complete conviction, but whose presentation he can nonetheless undertake, since it is not entirely impossible that truth lies hidden in them, and, in any case, nothing contrary to the very nature of religion is to be found in them. If he believed he could find anything of the latter sort in them, he could not in good conscience serve in his position; he would have to resign. Thus an appointed teacher’s use of his reason for the sake of his congregation is merely private, because, however large the congregation is, this use is always only domestic; in this regard, as a priest, he is not free and cannot be such because he is acting under instructions from someone else. By contrast, the cleric— as a scholar who speaks through his writings to the public as such, i.e., the world—enjoys in this public use of reason an unrestricted freedom to use his own rational capacities and to speak his own mind. For that the (spiritual) guardians of a people should themselves be immature is an absurdity that would insure the perpetuation of absurdities. ¶

But would a society of pastors, perhaps a church assembly or venerable presbytery (as those among the Dutch call themselves), not be justified in binding itself by oath to a certain unalterable symbol in order to secure a constant guardianship over each of its members and through them over the people, and this for all time: I say that this is wholly impossible. Such a contract, whose intention is to preclude forever all further enlightenment of the human race, is absolutely null and void, even if it should be ratified by the supreme power, by parliaments, and by the most solemn peace treaties. One age cannot bind itself, and thus conspire, to place a succeeding one in a condition whereby it would be impossible for the later age to expand its knowledge (particularly where it is so very important), to rid itself of errors,and generally to increase its enlightenment. That would be a crime against human nature, whose essential destiny lies precisely in such progress; subsequent generations are thus completely justified in dismissing such agreements as unauthorized and criminal. The criterion of everything that can be agreed upon as a law by a people lies in this question: Can a people impose such a law on itself? Now it might be possible, in anticipation of a better state of affairs, to introduce a provisional order for a specific, short time, all the while giving all citizens, especially clergy, in their role as scholars, the freedom to comment publicly, i.e., in writing, on the present institution’s shortcomings. The provisional order might last until insight into the nature of these matters had become so widespread and obvious that the combined (if not unanimous) voices of the populace could propose to the crown that it take under its protection those congregations that, in accord with their newly gained insight, had organized themselves under altered religious institutions, but without interfering with those wishing to allow matters to remain as before. However, it is absolutely forbidden that they unite into a religious organization that nobody may for the duration of a man’s lifetime publicly question, for so doing would deny, render fruitless, and make detrimental to succeeding generations an era in man’s progress toward improvement. A man may put off enlightenment with regard to what he ought to know, though only for a short time and for his own person; but to renounce it for himself, or, even more, for subsequent generations, is to violate and trample man’s divine rights underfoot. And what a people may not decree for itself may still less be imposed on it by a monarch, for his lawgiving authority rests on his unification of the people’s collective will in his own. If he only sees to it that all genuine or purported improvement is consonant with civil order, he can allow his subjects to do what they find necessary to their spiritual well-being, which is not his affair. However, he must prevent anyone from forcibly interfering with another’s working as best he can to determine and promote his well-being. It detracts from his own majesty when he interferes in these matters, since the writings in which his subjects attempt to clarify their insights lend value to his conception of governance. This holds whether he acts from his own highest insight—whereby he calls upon himself the reproach, “Caesar non est supra grammaticos.”2 — as well as, indeed even more, when he despoils his highest authority by supporting the spiritual despotism of some tyrants in his state over his other subjects. ¶

If it is now asked, “Do we presently live in an enlightened age?” the answer is, “No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment.” As matters now stand, a great deal is still lacking in order for men as a whole to be, or even to put themselves into a position to be able without external guidance to apply understanding confidently to religious issues. But we do have clear indications that the way is now being opened for men to proceed freely in this direction and that the obstacles to general enlightenment—to their release from their self-imposed immaturity—are gradually diminishing. In this regard, this age is the age of enlightenment, the century of Frederick3. ¶

A prince who does not find it beneath him to say that he takes it to be his duty to prescribe nothing, but rather to allow men complete freedom in religious matters—who thereby renounces the arrogant title of tolerance—is himself enlightened and deserves to be praised by a grateful present and by posterity as the first, at least where the government is concerned, to release the human race from immaturity and to leave everyone free to use his own reason in all matters of conscience. Under his rule, venerable pastors, in their role as scholars and without prejudice to their official duties, may freely and openly set out for the world’s scrutiny their judgments and views, even where these occasionally differ from the accepted symbol. Still greater freedom is afforded to those who are not restricted by an official post. This spirit of freedom is expanding even where it must struggle against the external obstacles of governments that misunderstand their own function. Such governments are illuminated by the example that the existence of freedom need not give cause for the least concern regarding public order and harmony in the commonwealth. If only they refrain from inventing artifices to keep themselves in it, men will gradually raise themselves from barbarism. ¶

I have focused on religious matters in setting out my main point concerning enlightenment, i.e., man’s emergence from self-imposed immaturity, first because our rulers have no interest in assuming the role of their subjects’ guardians with respect to the arts and sciences, and secondly because that form of immaturity is both the most pernicious and disgraceful of all. But the manner of thinking of a head of state who favors religious enlightenment goes even further, for he realizes that there is no danger to his legislation in allowing his subjects to use reason publicly and to set before the world their thoughts concerning better formulations of his laws, even if this involves frank criticism of legislation currently in effect. We have before us a shining example, with respect to which no monarch surpasses the one whom we honor. ¶

But only a ruler who is himself enlightened and has no dread of shadows, yet who likewise has a well-disciplined, numerous army to guarantee public peace, can say what no republic may dare, namely: “Argue as much as you want and about what you want, but obey!” Here as elsewhere, when things are considered in broad perspective, a strange, unexpected pattern in human affairs reveals itself, one in which almost everything is paradoxical. A greater degree of civil freedom seems advantageous to a people’s spiritual freedom; yet the former established impassable boundaries for the latter; conversely, a lesser degree of civil freedom provides enough room for all fully to expand their abilities. Thus, once nature has removed the hard shell from this kernel for which she has most fondly cared, namely, the inclination to and vocation for free thinking, the kernel gradually reacts on a people’s mentality (whereby they become increasingly able to act freely), and it finally even influences the principles of government, which finds that it can profit by treating men, who are now more than machines, in accord with their dignity.

[Luke de Spa]

lol kant

typical, you piece of shit

here's a book you of all people should read:
Exclusive – Neuropath by R. Scott Bakker (first chapter) BSCreview

[Luke de Spa]

You should know better.

After all, you’re watching it on the news: the diagonally parked cruisers, the milling officials who glance and scowl in your direction. You see the cordons, the lengths of sagging tape, and without thinking you know that there, on the far side, lies something horrific, the residue of something too wicked for general consumption. There, you understand, is the crime scene.

A place where human meat grows chill.

‘The Chiropractor,’ the newsmodel says, ‘continues to terrorize New Yorkers.’

You shudder when you hear that, because you are a New Yorker. The image flickers to Mrs Alvarez, the generic neighbor, who weeps at the loss of someone so special, so beautiful. She looks like a good woman, so you empathize. You do the mental math, calculating the distance between Mrs Alvarez and your house, and you think of calling a friend. Didn’t you go to a restaurant just around the corner from there?

You look at the phone lying next to your keys on the kitchenette. You want to call someone, but you curl your feet into your hands instead, run your thumbs over the polish on your toes.

The poor girl, you think. You scowl, trying to envisage the horrific truth behind the NYPD spokesperson and her facade of euphemisms. Multiple lacerations. Blunt force trauma. But there is more. There has to be a twist to make things twisted. The stuff about the spine – that’s just to juice the ratings, surely. What about the other stuff? The sex stuff. After all, it isn’t just the murder, it’s the aim.

The poor girl, you think, pressing your knees tight. Just like you, she had secrets, tender secrets, that vicious others wanted to know. You glimpse images, nude and rude and wet. You taste something metallic. You smell the goat of unwashed groins. For an instant, you hear her scream . . .

Troubled, your gaze drifts from the screen to the thumb petting your toes. You decide your feet look cute.

I agree.

You wonder if it’s something about the male species. It really wouldn’t surprise you. Your last boyfriend was sick – not sick sick, but sick enough – always trying to talk you into gagging on his you-know-what. And the one before that, well, we best not go down that road.

You blink, run two fingers down your temple and cheek in a way that would make your father recall your mother. Your eyes – vultures that they are – come circling back to the coverage. The detective to the left of the spokesperson, you decide, brings home copies of the crime scene photos. He has that grizzled look.

Like meat plucked too late from the fire.

You chuckle and sigh, feeling warm, safe, and lonely. This is stupid, you decide. You change the channel, move to the make-me-laugh section of the store.

That’s when you hear the tapping at your window.

You become very still.

There’s no code, no tempo or beat, only the arrhythmia of things waving in the wind.

Only me.

You mute the television, try to peer through your lovely reflection, but end up reviewing your appearance instead. You stand, bronze in the lamplight, breathless with indecision. Your spine arches.

You come to the edge of the fishbowl.

[Luke de Spa]

Chapter One

August 17th, 6.05 a.m.

Love dies hard.

Two years they had been divorced, and still he dreamed about her . . . Nora. As slender as an intake of breath, shining with the light of all those admiring eyes. It had been her day – her day first – and Thomas had made it his own by giving it to her wholly. The music thumped. The floor swayed with smiles and grand and flabby gestures. The grandfather from North Carolina, shaking his hands like Sunday revival. The cousins from California, wowing the women with their MTV moves. The aunt from WeightWatchers, striking this or that Cosmopolitan pose. The spectators laughed and cheered, continually glanced at the little illuminated screens they held in their palms. Catching his wind at the bar, Thomas watched them all. He beamed as his best man, Neil, broke clear of the fracas to join him. He looked like an actor, Thomas thought, dark-eyed and erratic, like Montgomery Clift celebrating the world’s end.

‘Welcome!’ Neil cried in a tone meant to cut through the jubilation, ‘Welcome to Disney World, old buddy!’

Thomas nodded the way people do when friends say inappropriate things, a kind of reflex affirmation, chin here, eyes over there. He could never leave things alone, Neil. That was what made him Neil, Thomas supposed – what made him extraordinary.

‘Give it a rest,’ he said.

Neil threw his hands out, as if gesturing to everything in all directions. ‘C’mon. You see it as clearly as I do. Courtship. Pair-bonding. Reproduction . . .’ He grinned in a manner that was at once festive and conspiratorial. No man living, it seemed to Thomas, could put so much contradiction into his smile. ‘This is all just part of the program, Goodbook.’

‘Neil . . .’

‘You don’t have an answer, do you?’

Thomas saw Nora making her way toward them, laughing at an uncle’s one-liner, clutching old hands. She had always been beautiful, but now with the pomp and attention she seemed something impossible, ethereal, a vision who would shed her gown for him and only him. He turned to scowl at his friend, to tell him that she – she – was his answer.

His new conclusion.

‘Time to grow up, don’t you think? Time to put the Argument behind us.’

‘Sure,’ Neil said. ‘Time to sleep.’

Nora danced between them, staggered Thomas by swinging from his arm.

‘You guys are freaks!’ she cried. She could always tell when they were talking shop, and always knew how to draw them back to the rough ground of more sensible souls. He held her in the rocking way of drunken lovers, laughing so hard he couldn’t speak. Another Tom and Nora giggle session. At parties, people would always comment how only they seemed to get each other’s jokes. Isn’t that what it meant? ‘Getting’ somebody?

They were just on the same drugs, Neil would say.

‘Can’t you feel it?’ she cried, rolling her eyes out to the drunken yonder. ‘All these people love us, Tommy! All these people luv-luv-luvvv—’

The alarm clock crowed as remorseless as a reversing garbage truck. Thomas Bible swatted at it, squinted at the spears of sunlight. He felt like a scrap of something drawn from a forgotten pocket: too crumpled for too long to ever be smoothed. He was hungover – well and truly. Running his tongue over his teeth, he winced at the taste.

He sat hunched for several moments, trying to muster the peace-of-stomach he’d need for the long lurch to the bathroom. Fucking dreams. Why, after all these years, would he dream of his wedding reception? It wasn’t so much the images he resented as the happiness.

He was too old for this shit, especially on a work day – no, even worse, a work and kid day. He could already hear Nora’s rebuke, her voice cross and her eyes jubilant: ‘What’s this I hear . . .’

The bathroom reeked of whiskey, but at least the toilet lid was down. He flushed without looking, then sat down in the tub and turned on the shower. The embalming water felt good, so much so he actually stood to wash his hair.

Afterward, he pulled on a robe and trundled downstairs, shushing his dog, an affable black lab named Bartender. He collected the whiskey tumblers and beer bottles on his way through the living room and thought about checking in on the den, but the partially closed door buzzed with awkwardness. Just inside the door, a pair of blue jeans lay crumpled across the carpet, legs pulled inside out. He considered barging in and committing some petty act of vengeance – bellowing like a drill sergeant or jumping up and down on the fold-out or something similarly stupid – but decided against it.

The Advil was in the kitchen.

His place was old, one of the original farmhouses built long before the rest of the surrounding subdivision. Creaky hardwood floors. Tall ceilings. Smallish rooms. No garage. A concrete porch just big enough for two Mormons. ‘Cozy,’ the real estate agent had said. ‘Claustrophobic,’ Nora had continually complained.

Even still, Thomas had grown to love the place. Over the years he had invested quite a bit of time and money in renovations – enough to make the Century 21 guy right. The kitchen, especially, with its period fixtures and porcelain-rimmed walls, radiated character and homeliness. In the morning sunlight, everything gleamed. The chairs cast ribbed shadows across the tile floor.

Now if only Nora hadn’t taken all the plants.

By the time he started the coffeemaker he was feeling much better – almost human. The power of routine, he supposed. Even half-poisoned, the old brain appreciated routine.

The previous night had been nothing if not crazy.

He wolfed down a couple of stale Krispy Kreme donuts with his coffee, hoping to settle his stomach. After sitting for several minutes listening to the fridge hum, he pulled himself to the granite counter and began preparing breakfast. He knew the kids were awake before he heard them. Bart always clicked out of the kitchen and bounded upstairs moments before the muffled cries began. Like all labs, he adored his tormentors.

‘No!’ Thomas heard his daughter, Ripley, shriek. Tumbling footsteps along the hallways, then, ‘No-no-no-no!’ all the way down the stairs.

‘Dad!’ the eight-year-old cried as she barrelled into the kitchen. She was thin and willowy in her Donna Duck pyjamas, with a pixie face and her grandmother’s long, raven-black hair. She swung into her seat with the strange combination of concentration and abandon that characterized everything she did. ‘Frankie showed me his you-know-what again!’

Thomas blinked. He’d always been an advocate of early childhood sex education, but he could see why most parents were keen to keep the genie in the bottle for as long as possible. Shame was a lazy parent’s way of teaching discretion. Or so he told himself.

She made a face. ‘His thing, Daddy. His’ – she screwed up her face as if to give the official word an official female expression – ‘peeenis.’

Thomas could only stare in horror. Dammit, Tom, he could hear Nora say. They need their own rooms. How many times . . . He called out upstairs, wincing at the volume of his own voice. ‘Frankie! Do you remember what we said about your morning – ’ He caught himself, looked askance at Ripley. ‘Your morning . . . you-know . . .’

Frankie’s petulant ‘Yes’ floated down from the nethers of the house. He sounded crestfallen.

‘Keep your pecker in your pants, son. Please.’

Of course Ripley had been watching closely. ‘Pecker, Daddy? Eeww!’

Thomas grabbed the bridge of his nose and sighed. Nora was going to kill him.

No shame, he told himself. The world was lesson enough. Ripley was already fretting over what clothes to wear, talking about how L’Oréal was better than Covergirl was better than whatever. Soon they would wince at photographs of themselves, at the sound of their voices on the answering machine, at the rust spots on the rockers of their car, and so on, and so on. Soon they would be good little consumers, buying this or that bandaid for their innumerable little shames.

Not if he could help it.

Several minutes afterward, little Frankie shuffled across the tiles, squinting against the sunlight. Thomas was relieved to see his Silver Surfer pyjama-bottoms intact. The four-year-old rubbed his puffy eyes, flapping his elbows as he did so. Though impish and compact, Frankie exaggerated all of his movements – even his facial expressions. He waved more than he needed to wave, stepped more than he needed to step; he even sat more than he needed to sit. He took up a lot of room for such a little kid, spatially as well as emotionally.

Ripley regarded him, her expression one of glum boredom. ‘Nobody needs to see that,’ she said, pointing at his crotch.

Thomas cracked another egg, smiled ruefully.

So?’ Frankie replied.

‘So it’s weird. Showing your thing to your sister is weird. Ugh! It’s sick.’

‘Is not sick. Daddy said it’s healthy. Right, Daddy?’

‘Yes . . .’ Thomas began, then grimaced, shaking his head. ‘I mean no . . . And yes.’

What was the problem? Hadn’t he taught a graduate seminar on child sexuality at Columbia? Didn’t he know the ‘developmentally correct’ swing for most every curve-ball a kid could throw? He held up both hands and stood over the table, trying to appear both stern and clinical. His children, however, had forgotten him. Mouths half full of toast, they bickered with the obstinate whininess that characterized so much of their communication.

‘Come on. Listen up, guys. Please.’

They were both chattering at the same time now. ‘No, you!’ ‘No, you!’ Christ Almighty, his head hurt.

‘Listen up, jerks!’ he cried. ‘The old man has had a rough night.’

Ripley chortled. ‘You got drunk with Uncle Cass last night, didn’t you?’

‘Can we wake him, Daddy?’ Frankie asked. ‘Can we wake him, please?’

What was it with the apprehension? Just a bad night, he told himself. I’ll sort it all out this afternoon.

‘No. Leave him be. Listen up! As I was saying, the old man has had a rough night. The old man needs his kids to cut him some slack.’

They both watched him, at once wary and amused. They knew what he was, the clever little fiends. He was a Hapless Dad. When they angered him, they simply pretended he was shamming until it seemed he was shamming. Manipulative little buggers.

Thomas took a deep breath. ‘I said, the old man needs his kids to cut him some slack.’

They shared a momentary glance, as though to make sure they were both on the same mischievous page, then began laughing.

‘Serve oos owr breakfust, wench!’ Frankie cried, mimicking some movie they’d watched not so long ago. It had become their Breakfast Joke.

With this, Thomas was undone. He conceded defeat by ruffling their hair and kissing their heads.

‘Don’t say “wench”,’ he murmured.

Then he got back to breakfast – like a good wench, he supposed. He’d forgotten how much he loved weekday mornings with his children.

Even when hungover.

Normally he saw Franklin and Ripley only on weekends, as per his custody agreement. But Nora had asked if he would take them for the week: some bullshit about a trip to San Francisco. Ordinarily taking the kids wouldn’t have been a problem, but Nora had unerringly caught him at the worst time possible: the run-up to the new school year, when the kids had scaled the stir-crazy summit of their summer holidays, and when he was up to his eyeballs with committee and course prep work for the upcoming semester. Thank God Mia, his neighbor, had agreed to help out.

Mia’s real name was Emilio, but everyone called him Mia, either because his last name was Farrow, or because of his days as a drag-queen. He was a great guy: an amateur Marxist and a professional homosexual – self-described. He was a technical writer for JDS Uniphase and usually worked out of his home. Though he constantly made noise about despising kids, he was positively maudlin when it came to Frankie and Ripley. He complained about them the way diehard sports fans complained about their team’s winning streaks: as though offering proof of humility to fickle gods. Thomas suspected that his love of the kids was nothing short of parental, which was to say, indistinguishable from pride.

Running late, Thomas hustled the kids across the lawn. The neighborhood was young enough to sport winding lanes and a bewildering variety of trees, but too old to suffer the super-sized Legoland look. They found Mia standing on his porch arguing with his partner, Bill Mack. Mia had dark, Marine-cropped hair, and a face that shouted zero body fat. His build might have been described as slight, were it not for the obvious strength of his shoulders and arms. The man was built like an acrobat.

‘So that’s just great,’ Mia was saying. ‘Fanfuckingtastic, Bill.’ He turned and smiled guilelessly at the Bibles assembled on the steps below. ‘Hi, kids,’ he said. ‘You got here just in time to say bye-bye to the prick.’

‘Hi, William,’ Thomas said carefully to Bill. The previous month Bill had decided he wanted to be called William – the name had more ‘cultural capital’ he had said.

‘Jeeeezus Christ,’ Mia snorted, his inflection somewhere between Alabama wife-beater and California gay. ‘Why not just call him Willy?’

‘’ee’s goot a wee willie,’ Frankie cried out in his Scottish accent. Another movieism.

Mia laughed aloud.

‘Why hello, Thomas,’ Bill replied sunnily. ‘And how are the Bibles doing?’

‘Dad’s hungover and Frankie showed me his pecker,’ Ripley said.

Bill’s smile was pure Mona Lisa. ‘Same ol, same ol, huh?’ He crinkled his nose. ‘I think that’s my cue . . .’ Sidling between the Bibles, he walked to his old model Toyota SUV – one of the ones eco-protestors liked to sling tar across. He looked like a blond Sears catalogue model in his three-piece. Thomas glimpsed Mia mouth Fuck off and die as he pulled out the driveway.

For as long as he’d known them, Bill and Mia had done all the things statistically doomed couples typically do. They made faces while the other was talking – a frightfully good indicator of impending relationship meltdown. They described each other in unrelentingly negative terms. They even smacked each other around now and again. And yet somehow they managed to thrive, let alone survive. They had certainly outlasted the Bibles.

‘Nothing too serious?’ Thomas said, checking as much as asking. Over the years he’d helped the two of them sort out several near-fatal communication breakdowns, usually by talking one of them from the brink without the other knowing. Guerilla therapy, he called it.

‘I’ll be fine, professor. Gay men love assholes, remember? Pardon my French.’

‘Daddy speaks French too,’ Ripley said.

‘I’m sure he does, honey.’ Mia nodded at the black minivan parked next to Thomas’s Acura. He raised his eyebrows. ‘Company, professor? L’amore, perhaps?’

Smirking, Thomas closed his eyes and shook his head. Mia was hopelessly nosy.

‘No. Nothing like that.’

Thomas was a creature of habit.

Over the years since he and Nora had moved to the burbs, the hour-long commute into Manhattan on the MTA North had become a reprieve of sorts. Thomas liked the packed anonymity of it all. The literary types could boo-hoo all they wanted about the ‘lonely post-industrial crowd’, but there was something to be said for the privacy of vacant and indifferent faces. Countless millions of people all herded into queues, all possessing lives of extraordinary richness, and most with sense enough not to share them with strangers.

It seemed a miracle.

Thomas imagined some grad student somewhere had published a paper on the topic. Some grad student somewhere had published a paper on everything. Now that the big game had been hunted to extinction, all the little mysteries found themselves in the academic crosshairs, all the things that made humans human.

Usually Thomas read the New York Times – the ink and paper version – on the trip into Manhattan, but sometimes, like today, he simply stared at the passing Hudson and dozed. No river, he was certain, had been the object of more absent contemplation than the Hudson.

He had much to think about. Frankie’s incestuous exhibitionism was the least of his concerns.

He glanced at the front page of his neighbor’s Times and saw the headlines he’d expected.

EU SAYS US AID PACKAGE ‘NOT ENOUGH’

DEATH TOLL COULD TOP 50,000 RUSSIAN OFFICIALS SAY

And of course,

THE ‘CHIROPRACTOR’ STRIKES AGAIN: SPINELESS CORPSE FOUND IN BROOKLYN

He found himself peering, trying to read the hazy squares of text beneath. The only words he could make out were ‘vertebrae’ and ‘eviscerated.’ He blinked and squeezed his eyes, cursed himself for giving in to his morbid curiosity. Thousands of years ago, when people still lived in small communities, paying attention to random acts of violence actually paid reproductive dividends. That’s why human brains were hardwired to pay attention to them.

But now? It was little more than an indulgence. Candy for a stone-age mind.

He thought about the previous night instead.

He was just screwing with me . . . Wasn’t he?

Thomas emerged from the oily humidity of the subway onto Broadway and 116th. He leaned against the railing, overcome with what his father had always called ‘jelly belly’. Fucking shooters. Why had he agreed to do shooters? The New York march of cars and people soothed him for some reason.

Columbia was surprisingly busy, given the school year had yet to begin. Dozens of students sat on the steps along the Low Plaza, cradling books and coffees and the ubiquitous palmtops. Thomas always enjoyed the walk to Schermerhorn Hall: the cobbled courtyards and bricked gardens, the contrast of grass and old stone, the humble academic grandeur. He passed through the shadow of St Paul’s Chapel, and it seemed he could feel the morning cool radiating from its hunched walls. For all its logistical drawbacks, Schermerhorn was an ideal home for the psychology department. Apparently Columbia’s designers had a yen for interior spaces, enclaves within enclaves. It seemed proper that the Schermerhorn should be hidden, just as it seemed proper that it should be old, the stone leached, the walls settling on uncertain foundations – a place built by men who could still take the soul seriously.

Perhaps because he was hungover, Thomas found himself pausing before the entrance, gazing at the latter half of the inscription above.

SPEAK TO THE EARTH AND IT SHALL TEACH THEE

A laudable commandment, he supposed. But what if humanity had no stomach for the lesson?

He ducked his head into the psychology department office to check his mail.

‘Oh, Professor Bible,’ he heard Suzanne, the head administrative assistant call.

Hanging sideways in the doorway, he smiled at her. ‘Make it quick, Suzy; I’m feeling woozy.’

She grimaced and nodded toward three suits, two women and one man, loitering outside the department head’s office door. They seemed to be watching him with peculiar interest.

‘Can I help you?’ Thomas asked. Their scrutiny felt vaguely offensive.

The dark-haired woman stepped forward and held out her hand. ‘Professor Bible? Thomas Bible?’ she asked.

Thomas didn’t reply, convinced that she already knew who he was. Something about their demeanor said they had glossy photos in their breast pockets, and dossiers in their palmtops.

‘I’m Shelley Atta,’ she continued after an awkward moment. ‘This is Samantha Logan and Dan Gerard.’ Logan was tall, blond, and implausibly attractive. Despite the crisp professionalism of her suit, something about her demeanor spoke of tongue studs and ankle tattoos. With blue eyes and gallic brown hair, Gerard had the look of a washed-out football captain: packed with low-density muscle, indifferent to the faint mustard stains on his lapel. The kind of guy who made monkey faces when he peed. They seemed an unlikely pair.

‘Is there someplace private where we might speak?’ Atta asked.

‘Preferably someplace with a BD player,’ Logan added.

‘What’s this about?’ Thomas asked.

Shelley Atta’s eyes narrowed in irritation. She had a dense frame that could seem matronly or imposing, depending on her expression. She suddenly seemed imposing. ‘We’re with the FBI, Professor Bible . . . As I said, is there someplace private where we can talk?’

‘My office will have to do,’ Thomas said, turning on his heel like the busy man he was.

He demanded and studied their identification on the way to his office. He felt like a moron afterward. They certainly looked at him as if he were a moron.

Thomas distrusted ‘law enforcement’ in all its multifarious guises, for many small reasons. A cop with the NYPD had been his neighbor once – a total asshole. Narcissism. Borderline personality disorder. You name it. Then there was the shakedown he had experienced driving through backwoods Georgia years back. Somehow the local sheriff had clocked his crippled Volkswagen – which could manage what? sixty-four or sixty-five floored? – doing ninety-seven. He still remembered the way the man had leaned into his window: like he was hungry and Thomas had his Kentucky Fried Chicken.

But the big reason was that he knew how frail people were. It was his job, studying all the things people would rather not know about themselves. He knew how quickly and how thoroughly positions of power could distort them. He knew the behavioral consequences of such distortion, and he knew how often innocents suffered as a result.

Thomas unlocked the door and ushered the three agents into the papery silence of the cubicle that was his office. Unlike some of his colleagues, he had never made a ‘home’ of his office. He had no comfy chairs for graduate groupies, no prints of Nietzsche, Skinner or Che Guevara, just books and sticky-notes. The agents scanned his shelves. The attractive blond ran an appreciative finger down the spine of his first and only published work, Through the Brain Darkly. Agent Atta seemed to be looking for evidence of pornography or drug use. Either Dan Gerard was a restless man, or he was distressed by the chaos. A mild OCD perhaps?

‘So what’s this about?’ Thomas asked again.

&‘We should watch the BD first,’ Shelley said, producing a silvery disk.

Thomas’s stomach tightened. They were purposefully denying him context, anything that might prepare him for what he was about to see. They were going to be watching him closely, he knew, looking for small, telltale cues in his reaction . . .

Just what in the hell was going on?

The FBI, here in his office. Surreal. He suddenly relaxed, even smiled as he turned on his computer. The kids were going to freak when he told them about this. ‘The FBI, Daddy? No way!’

It must be some kind of mix-up.

They waited for Windows to load – always an awkward moment, it seemed to Thomas, even when alone.

‘Bible,’ he heard Agent Gerard say behind him. ‘What kind of name is that?’

He was trying to rattle him, Thomas supposed, using oblique antagonism to make it more difficult for him to conceal any potentially incriminating reaction. But they had no idea just how hungover Thomas was. He doubted a muzzle-flash next to his ear could make him jump.

Thomas turned in his swivel and looked Gerard dead in the eyes. ‘Grab those chairs,’ he said, motioning to the far side of his office. ‘We should all sit.’

Agent Gerard glanced nervously at Agent Atta, then did as he was told. One down. Two to go.

Thomas dropped the disc in the tray. They were all sitting now.

The screen was black.

&nbsp‘Do those work?’ Agent Atta asked, pointing at his desktop speakers. Thomas clicked through a couple different windows.

‘YOU LIKE THAT?’ blared from the speakers.

The voice sounded male, but it was electronically distorted – deep, as though gurgling through a synthesizer’s version of the ocean bottom. Thomas’s skin pimpled. What was this?

‘What are you doing?’ A female voice, breathless and undistorted. She sounded confused, as if she wanted to be terrified but . . .

DO YOU LIKE?’

‘Nnnngha . . . Oh God, yesssss.’

But was too aroused.

There was a tussle of lights on the screen, then Thomas saw a home video shot of a woman’s torso. She was sitting in some kind of black leather chair, and wearing a patterned-pink shift so soaked in water or sweat that it clung to her like a semi-translucent condom. She was panting like a dog, her back arched, her nipples hard. Her face remained off camera.

‘YES . . . YOU LIKE,’ the rumbling voice declared. Whoever was speaking, Thomas realized, was also holding the videocam.

‘What… Wha-what are you doing?’

‘MAKING AN ARGUMENT.’

‘Oh, Jeeeeesussss . . .’

The camera dipped, and Thomas glimpsed her naked thighs swaying. She seemed to be grinding her hips, but nothing was touching her. Nothing he could see.

‘MAKING LOVE.’

‘Mmmm . . . Mmmm,’ the faceless woman moaned, her voice curiously childlike.

‘MORE?’

The camera jerked upward, and Thomas saw her face. She was bleach-blond, with the pouty-lipped, harem-beauty of a Hollywood starlet. Her right cheek was thrust against her shoulder. Her eyes were glassy and unfocused, her lips pulled into a pained O.

‘Pleeeeaaase,’ she gasped.

Her body stiffened. Her face slackened. For a moment, her lips hitched into an Elvis curl. Then she started writhing in ecstasy. Gasps became howls, and for a mad moment, she shrieked, until the tendon-baring intensity strangled the possibility of sound. She convulsed, jerked to the plucking of inner strings.

&Then suddenly she was back, whimpering, ‘Oh-my-gawd-oh-my-gawd—’

‘AGAIN?’

‘Oh-please-yes!’ Swallow, then, ‘Yes-yes-yes-yes!’ with every quick breath.

Then she was coming again, and the camera jerked yet farther up.

Thomas exploded from his chair. ‘Are you fucking kidding me!’

The woman’s braincase had been sawed open. A flea-circus of pins and wires formed a scaffold over the convoluted neural tissue. Lobes glistened in the light.

‘Calm down, Mr Bible,’ Agent Atta said.

Thomas clutched his scalp, fairly yanked his hair. ‘Do you realize I could fucking sue you for showing me this . . . this . . . What the fuck is this?’

‘WOULD YOU LIKE THE CONTROLS?’

‘The disc arrived by mail in Quantico, Virginia, the day before yesterday.’

‘So this is your fucking mail? What? You belong to the rape-of-the-month club or something?’

As far as we can tell,’ Shelley Atta said hesitantly, ‘the woman in the video was not sexually assaulted.’

‘YOU ARE FREE,’ the ocean-voice croaked. ‘YOU KNOW THIS? YOU MAY LEAVE ANY TIME YOU WISH.’

Thomas clicked pause. An image of the woman biting her lower lip froze on the screen. He found himself looking away, around the claustrophobic confines of his office. The air seemed thick with exhalations. Someone smelled like coleslaw.

‘Tell us,’ the other woman, Samantha, said, ‘do you know the whereabouts of—’

‘No,’ Thomas interrupted. ‘I’m not saying anything until you tell me what this is about. I’m a psychologist, remember? I’m familiar with informal interrogation tactics, and I refuse to cooperate until you stop playing games and tell me just what the fuck is going on.’

Agent Atta scowled at him. Agent Gerard stared blankly at the frozen screen.

‘Let me tell you what we do know,’ Samantha Logan said. ‘According to Biometrics, the woman is Cynthia Powski, or ‘Cream’, a porn starlet from Escondido, California, who was reported missing last month. Our analysts assure us the images are real, and the neurosurgeons we’ve consulted insist the level of . . . manipulation depicted is quite possible. What you just witnessed is real, Professor Bible. As bizarre as it sounds, someone is abducting people and screwing with their brains.’

‘People?’ Thomas asked, his ears buzzing. ‘You mean this woman isn’t the first?’

Agent Logan nodded.

Suddenly Thomas understood. ‘You’re looking for a neurosurgeon . . .’

He thought of the previous night.

‘According to our research,’ Shelley Atta said, ‘you were roommates with Neil Cassidy at Princeton, weren’t you?’

&‘Of course I was— You think Neil did this?’

‘We’re almost certain of it.’

Thomas waved his hands wide, as though warding away something with more momentum than his world could handle. ‘No. No. Look, you don’t know Neil. There’s simply no way he could have done this. No way.’ Even as he spoke, he could see him, Neil, grinning in the porch light, his teeth Crest-commercial straight.

‘And why do you say that, professor?’ Agent Logan asked.

‘Because Neil is sane. When my life goes crazy, when I have difficulty distinguishing up from down, I call Neil – that’s how sane he is. Whoever’s doing this has suffered some kind of psychotic breakdown. Statistically, the chances of something like that happening to men my age is almost nil.’

‘So you and Neil are close?’ Agent Gerard said.

Numb nod.

‘How close?’ Agent Atta asked.

‘Bum-buddy close. What fucking business is it of yours?’ Thomas paused. He was letting his temper get the best of him – and letting these Feds push his buttons. Think clear, he reminded himself. Think straight. But he couldn’t squeeze the writhing images of Cynthia Powski from his thoughts. He could still hear her moan, it seemed. He could even smell her sweat.

‘Look,’ he continued evenly. ‘Your primary suspect is a very close friend of mine. And you know what? If we were talking about somebody I didn’t know, say the chief of neurosurgery at John Hopkins, I’d probably be more than willing to play this game with you. But I know how these things work. You’re fishing for something. It could be general information, or it could be something specific. The bottom line is that I have no way of knowing just what you’re fishing for, which means I have no way of knowing whether I’m helping my buddy or digging him a deeper hole.’

‘You don’t trust us?’ Agent Logan asked.

‘Are you kidding me?’

‘We’re the good guys, Professor Bible,’ Agent Atta said.

‘Sure you are. Do you have any idea just how bad people are at reasoning? It’s terrifying. Add to that the contradictory interests typically generated by hierarchies, like the FBI, where career-friendly decisions are so often at odds with truth-friendly decisions. Add to that the emergency repeal of the constitutional provisions guaranteeing due process—’

‘It would be stupid to trust us,’ Atta said, her tone tired and disgusted. ‘Irrational.’

‘Exactly,’ Thomas said flatly. ‘One might even say insane.’

[Mablak]

I'll blow your minds with a quote from Naked Lunch at some point, as soon as I'm more than halfway through it. But the last time I picked it up I had a 102 degree fever and given the style of the book, it was truly a disgusting and disorienting experience.

[Eulogy]

bah

[publius clodius]

XVII.

THAT TO STUDY PHILOSOPHY IS TO LEARN TO DIE

CICERO says "that to study philosophy is nothing but to prepare one's self to die." The reason of which is, because study and contemplation do in some sort withdraw from us our soul, and employ it separately from the body, which is a kind of apprenticeship and a resemblance of death; or else, because all the wisdom and reasoning in the world do in the end conclude in this point, to teach us not to fear to die. And to say the truth, either our reason mocks us, or it ought to have no other aim but our contentment only, nor to endeavor anything but, in sum, to make us live well, and, as the Holy Scripture says, at our ease. All the opinions of the world agree in this, that pleasure is our end, though we make use of divers means to attain it: they would, otherwise, be rejected at the first motion; for who would give ear to him that should propose affliction and misery for his end? The controversies and disputes of the philosophical sects upon this point are merely verbal- "Transcurramus solertissimas nugas"- there is more in them of opposition and obstinacy than is consistent with so sacred a profession; but whatsoever personage a man takes upon himself to perform, he ever mixes his own part with it.

Let the philosophers say what they will, the main thing at which we all aim, even in virtue itself, is pleasure. It amuses me to rattle in their ears this word, which they so nauseate to hear; and if it signify some supreme pleasure and excessive contentment, it is more due to the assistance of virtue than to any other assistance whatever. This pleasure, for being more gay, more sinewy, more robust, and more manly, is only the more seriously voluptuous, and we ought to give it the name of pleasure, as that which is more favorable, gentle, and natural, and not that of vigor, from which we have denominated it. The other, and meaner pleasure, if it could deserve this fair name, it ought to be by way of competition, and not of privilege. I find it less exempt from traverses and inconveniences than virtue itself; and, besides that the enjoyment is more momentary, fluid, and frail, it has its watchings, fasts, and labors, its sweat and its blood; and, moreover, has particular to itself so many several sorts of sharp and wounding passions, and so dull a satiety attending it, as equal it to the severest penance. And we mistake if we think that these incommodities serve it for a spur and a seasoning to its sweetness (as in nature one contrary is quickened by another), or say, when we come to virtue, that like consequences and difficulties overwhelm and render it austere and inaccessible; whereas, much more aptly than in voluptuousness, they ennoble, sharpen, and heighten the perfect and divine pleasure they procure us. He renders himself unworthy of it who will counterpoise its cost with its fruit, and neither understands the blessing nor how to use it. Those who preach to us that the quest of it is craggy, difficult, and painful, but its fruition pleasant, what do they mean by that but to tell us that is always unpleasing? For what human means will ever attain its enjoyment? The most perfect have been fain to content themselves to aspire unto it, and to approach it only, without ever possessing it. But they are deceived, seeing that of all the pleasures we know, the very pursuit is pleasant. The attempt ever relishes of the quality of the thing to which it is directed, for it is a good part of, and consubstantial with, the effect. The felicity and beatitude that glitters in Virtue, shines throughout all her appurtenances and avenues, even to the first entry and utmost limits.

Now, of all the benefits that virtue confers upon us, the contempt of death is one of the greatest, as the means that accommodates human life with a soft and easy tranquillity, and gives us a pure and pleasant taste of living, without which all other pleasure would be extinct. Which is the reason why all the rules center and concur in this one article. And although they all in like manner, with common accord, teach us also to despise pain, poverty, and the other accidents to which human life is subject, it is not, nevertheless, with the same solicitude, as well by reason these accidents are not of so great necessity, the greater part of mankind passing over their whole lives without ever knowing what poverty is, and some without sorrow or sickness, as Xenophilus the musician, who lived a hundred and six years in perfect and continual health; as also because, at the worst, death can, whenever we please, cut short and put an end to all other inconveniences. But as to death, it is inevitable:

"Omnes eodem cogimur; omnium Versatur urna serius ocius Sors exitura, et nos in aeternum Exilium impositura cymbae,"

and, consequently, if it frights us, 'tis a perpetual torment, for which there is no sort of consolation. There is no way by which it may not reach us. We may continually turn our heads this way and that, as in a suspected country, "quae, quasi saxum Tantalo, semper impendet." Our courts of justice often send back condemned criminals to be executed upon the place where the crime was committed; but, carry them to fine houses by the way, prepare for them the best entertainment you can-

"Non Siculae dapes Dulcem elaborabunt saporem: Non avium citharaeque cantus Somnum reducent."

Do you think they can relish it? and that the fatal end of their journey being continually before their eyes, would not alter and deprave their palate from tasting these regalios?

"Audit iter, numeratque dies, spatioque viarum Metitur vitam; torquetur peste futura."

The end of our race is death; 'tis the necessary object of our aim, which, if it fright us, how is it possible to advance a step without a fit of ague? The remedy the vulgar use is not to think on't; but from what brutish stupidity can they derive so gross a blindness? They must bridle the ass by the tail.

"Qui capite ipse suo instituit vestigia retro,"

'tis no wonder if he be often trapped in the pitfall. They affright people with the very mention of death, and many cross themselves, as it were the name of the devil. And because the making a man's will is in reference to dying, not a man will be persuaded to take a pen in hand to that purpose till the physician has passed sentence upon him, and totally given him over, and then between grief and terror, God knows in how fit a condition of understanding he is to do it.

The Romans, by reason that this poor syllable death sounded so harshly to their ears, and seemed so ominous, found out a way to soften and spin it out by a periphrasis, and instead of pronouncing such a one is dead, said, "Such a one has lived," or "Such a one has ceased to live;" for, provided there was any mention of life in the case, though past, it carried yet some sound of consolation. And from them it is that we have borrowed our expression, "The late monsieur such and such a one." Peradventure, as the saying is, the term we have lived is worth our money. I was born between eleven and twelve o'clock in the forenoon the last day of February, 1533, according to our computation, beginning the year the 1st of January, and it is now just fifteen days since I was complete nine-and-thirty years old; I make account to live, at least, as many more. In the meantime, to trouble a man's self with the thought of a thing so far off, were folly. But what? Young and old die upon the same terms; no one departs out of life otherwise than if he had but just before entered into it; neither is any man so old and decrepit, who, having heard of Methuselah, does not think he has yet twenty years good to come. Fool that thou art, who has assured unto thee the term of life? Thou dependest upon physicians' tales: rather consult effects and experience. According to the common course of things, 'tis long since that thou hast lived by extraordinary favor: thou hast already outlived the ordinary term of life. And that is so, reckon up thy acquaintance, how many more have died before they arrived at thy age than have attained unto it; and of those who have ennobled their lives by their renown, take but an account, and I dare lay a wager thou wilt find more who have died before than after five-and-thirty years of age. It is full both of reason and piety too, to take example by the humanity of Jesus Christ Himself; now, He ended His life at three-and-thirty years. The greatest man, that was no more than a man, Alexander, died also at the same age. How many several ways has death to surprise us?

"Quid quisque, vitet, nunquam homini satis Cautum est in horas."

To omit fevers and pleurisies, who would ever have imagined that a duke of Brittany should be pressed to death in a crowd as that duke was, at the entry of Pope Clement, my neighbor, into Lyons? Hast thou not seen one of our kings killed at a tilting, and did not one of his ancestors die by the jostle of a hog? Aeschylus, threatened with the fall of a house, was to much purpose circumspect to avoid that danger, seeing that he was knocked on the head by a tortoise falling out of an eagle's talons in the air. Another was choked with a grapestone; an emperor killed with the scratch of a comb in combing his head. Aemilius Lepidus with a stumble at his own threshold, and Aufidius with a jostle against the door as he entered the council-chamber. And between the very thighs of woman, Cornelius Gallus the praetor; Tigillinus, captain of the watch at Rome; Ludovico, son of Guido di Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua; and (of worse example) Speusippus, a Platonic philosopher, and one of our popes. The poor judge Bebius gave adjournment in a case for eight days, but he himself meanwhile, was condemned by death, and his own stay of life expired. While Caius Julius, the physician, was anointing the eyes of a patient, death closed his own; and, if I may bring in an example of my own blood, a brother of mine, Captain St. Martin, a young man, three-and-twenty years old, who had already given sufficient testimony of his valor, playing a match at tennis, received a blow of a ball a little above his right ear, which, as it gave no manner of sign of wound or contusion, he took no notice of it, nor so much as sat down to repose himself, but, nevertheless, died within five or six hours after, of an apoplexy occasioned by that blow.

These so frequent and common examples passing every day before our eyes, how is it possible a man should disengage himself from the thought of death, or avoid fancying that it has us, every moment, by the throat? What matter is it, you will say, which way it comes to pass, provided a man does not terrify himself with the expectation? For my part, I am of this mind, and if a man could by any means avoid it, though by creeping under a calf's skin, I am one that should not be ashamed of the shift; all I aim at is, to pass my time at my ease, and the recreations that will most contribute to it, I take hold of, as little glorious and exemplary as you will.

"Praetulerim... delirus inersque videri, Dum mea delectent mala me, vel denique fallant, Quam sapere, et ringi."

But 'tis folly to think of doing anything that way. They go, they come, they gallop and dance, and not a word of death. All this is very fine: but withal, when it comes either to themselves, their wives, their children, or friends, surprising them at unawares and unprepared, then what torment, what outcries, what madness and despair! Did you ever see anything so subdued, so changed, and so confounded? A man must, therefore, make more early provision for it; and this brutish negligence, could it possibly lodge in the brain of any man of sense (which I think utterly impossible), sells us its merchandise too dear. Were it an enemy that could be avoided, I would then advise to borrow arms even of cowardice itself; but seeing it is not, and that it will catch you as well flying and playing the poltroon, as standing to't like an honest man-

"Nempe et fugacem persequitur virum, Nec parcit imbellis juventae Poplitibus timidoque tergo."

And seeing that no temper of arms is of proof to secure us-

"Ille licet ferro cautus se condat, et aere, Mors tamen inclusum protrahet inde caput"

-let us learn bravely to stand our ground, and fight him. And to begin to deprive him of the greatest advantage he has over us, let us take a way quite contrary to the common course. Let us disarm him of his novelty and strangeness, let us converse and be familiar with him, and have nothing so frequent in our thoughts as death. Upon all occasions represent him to our imagination in his every shape; at the stumbling of a horse, at the falling of a tile, at the least prick with a pin, let us presently consider, and say to ourselves, "Well, and what if it had been death itself?" and, thereupon, let us encourage and fortify ourselves. Let us evermore, amidst our jollity and feasting, set the remembrance of our frail condition before our eyes, never suffering ourselves to be so far transported with our delights, but that we have some intervals of reflecting upon, and considering how many several ways this jollity of ours tends to death, and with how many dangers it threatens it. The Egyptians were wont to do after this manner, who in the height of their feasting and mirth, caused a dried skeleton of a man to be brought into the room to serve for a memento to their guests.

"Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum: Grata superveniet, quae non sperabitur, hora."

Where death waits for us is uncertain; let us look for him everywhere. The premeditation of death is the premeditation of liberty; he who has learned to die, has unlearned to serve. There is nothing of evil in life, for him who rightly comprehends that the privation of life is no evil: to know how to die, delivers us from all subjection and constraint. Paulus Aemilius answered him whom the miserable king of Macedon, his prisoner, sent to entreat him that he would not lead him in his triumph, "Let him make that request to himself."

In truth, in all things, if nature do not help a little, it is very hard for art and industry to perform anything to purpose. I am in my own nature not melancholic, but meditative; and there is nothing I have more continually entertained myself withal than imaginations of death, even in the most wanton time of my age:

"Jucundum quum aetas florida ver ageret."

In the company of ladies, and at games, some have perhaps thought me possessed with some jealousy, or the uncertainty of some hope, while I was entertaining myself with the remembrance of some one, surprised, a few days before, with a burning fever of which he died, returning from an entertainment like this, with his head full of idle fancies of love and jollity, as mine was then, and that, for aught I knew, the same destiny was attending me.

"Jam fuerit, nec post unquam revocare licebit."

Yet did not this thought wrinkle my forehead any more than any other. It is impossible but we must feel a sting in such imaginations as these, at first; but with often turning and re-turning them in one's mind, they, at last, become so familiar as to be no trouble at all; otherwise, I, for my part, should be in a perpetual fright and frenzy; for never man was so distrustful of his life, never man so uncertain as to its duration. Neither health, which I have hitherto ever enjoyed very strong and vigorous, and very seldom interrupted, does prolong, nor sickness contract my hopes. Every minute, methinks, I am escaping, and it eternally runs in my mind, that what may be done to-morrow, may be done to-day. Hazards and dangers do, in truth, little or nothing hasten our end; and if we consider how many thousands more remain and hang over our heads, besides the accident that immediately threatens us, we shall find that the sound and the sick, those that are abroad at sea, and those that sit by the fire, those who are engaged in battle, and those who sit idle at home, are the one as near it as the other. "Nemo altero fragilior est: nemo in crastinum sui certior." For anything I have to do before I die, the longest leisure would appear too short, were it but an hour's business I had to do.

A friend of mine the other day turning over my tablets, found therein a memorandum of something I would have done after my decease, whereupon I told him, as it was really true, that though I was no more than a league's distance only from my own house, and merry and well, yet when that thing came into my head, I made haste to write it down there, because I was not certain to live till I came home. As a man that am eternally brooding over my own thoughts, and confine them to my own particular concerns, I am at all hours as well prepared as I am ever like to be, and death, whenever he shall come, can bring nothing along with him I did not expect long before. We should always, as near as we can, be booted and spurred, and ready to go, and, above all things, take care, at that time, to have no business with any one but one's self:

"Quid brevi fortes jaculamur aevo Multa?"

for we shall there find work enough to do, without any need of addition. One man complains, more than of death, that he is thereby prevented of a glorious victory; another, that he must die before he has married his daughter, or educated his children; a third seems only troubled that he must lose the society of his wife; a fourth, the conversation of his son, as the principal comfort and concern of his being. For my part, I am, thanks be to God, at this instant in such a condition, that I am ready to dislodge, whenever it shall please Him, without regret for anything whatsoever. I disengage myself throughout from all worldly relations; my leave is soon taken of all but myself. Never did any one prepare to bid adieu to the world more absolutely and unreservedly, and to shake hands with all manner of interest in it, than I expect to do. The deadest deaths are the best.

"'Miser, O miser,' aiunt, 'omnia ademit Una dies infesta mihi tot praemia vitae.'"

And the builder,

"'Manent,' says he, 'opera interrupta, minaeque Murorum ingentes.'"

A man must design nothing that will require so much time to the finishing, or, at least, with no such passionate desire to see it brought to perfection. We are born to action. "Quum moriar medium solvar et inter opus." I would always have a man to be doing, and, as much as in him lies, to extend and spin out the offices of life; and then let death take me planting my cabbages, indifferent to him, and still less of my garden's not being finished. I saw one die, who, at his last gasp, complained of nothing so much as that destiny was about to cut the thread of a chronicle history he was then compiling, when he was gone no farther than the fifteenth or sixteenth of our kings.

"Illud in his rebus non addunt, nec tibi earum Jam desiderium rerum super insidit una."

We are to discharge ourselves from these vulgar and hurtful humors. To this purpose it was that men first appointed the places of sepulture adjoining the churches, and in the most frequented places of the city, to accustom, says Lycurgus, the common people, women, and children, that they should not be startled at the sight of a corpse, and to the end, that the continual spectacle of bones, graves, and funeral obsequies should put us in mind of our frail condition.

"Quin etiam exhilarare viris convivia caede Mos olim, et miscere epulis spectacula dira, Certantum ferro, saepe et super ipsa cadentum Pocula, respersis non parco sanguine mensis."

And as the Egyptians after their feasts were wont to present the company with a great image of death, by one that cried out to them, "Drink and be merry, for such shalt thou be when thou art dead;" so it is my custom to have death not only in my imagination, but continually in my mouth. Neither is there anything of which I am so inquisitive, and delight to inform myself, as the manner of men's deaths, their words, looks, and bearing; nor any places in history I am so intent upon; and it is manifest enough, by my crowding in examples of this kind, that I have a particular fancy for that subject. If I were a writer of books, I would compile a register, with a comment, of the various deaths of men: he who should teach men to die, would at the same time teach them to live. Dicearchus made one, to which he gave that title; but it was designed for another and less profitable end.

Peradventure, some one may object, that the pain and terror of dying so infinitely exceed all manner of imagination, that the best fencer will be quite out of his play when it comes to the push. Let them say what they will: to premeditate is doubtless a very great advantage; and besides, is it nothing to go so far, at least, without disturbance or alteration? Moreover, nature herself assists and encourages us: if the death be sudden and violent, we have not leisure to fear; if otherwise, I perceive that as I engage further in my disease, I naturally enter into a certain loathing and disdain of life. I find I have much more ado to digest this resolution of dying, when I am well in health, than when languishing of a fever; and by how much I have less to do with the commodities of life, by reason that I begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, by so much I look upon death with less terror. Which makes me hope, that the farther I remove from the first, and the nearer I approach to the latter, I shall the more easily exchange the one for the other. And, as I have experienced in other occurrences, that, as Caesar says, things often appear greater to us at a distance than near at hand, I have found, that being well, I have had maladies in much greater horror than when really afflicted with them. The vigor wherein I now am, the cheerfulness and delight wherein I now live, make the contrary estate appear in so great a disproportion to my present condition, that, by imagination, I magnify those inconveniences by one-half, and apprehend them to be much more troublesome, than I find them really to be, when they lie the most heavy upon me; I hope to find death the same.

Let us but observe in the ordinary changes and declinations we daily suffer, how nature deprives us of the light and sense of our bodily decay. What remains to an old man of the vigor of his youth and better days?

"Heu! senibus vitae portio quanta manet."

Caesar, to an old weather-beaten soldier of his guards, who came to ask him leave that he might kill himself, taking notice of his withered body and decrepit motion, pleasantly answered, "Thou fanciest, then, that thou art yet alive." Should a man fall into this condition on the sudden, I do not think humanity capable of enduring such a change: but nature, leading us by the hand, an easy and, as it were, an insensible pace step by step conducts us to that miserable state, and by that means makes it familiar to us, so that we are insensible of the stroke when our youth dies in us, though it be really a harder death than the final dissolution of a languishing body, than the death of old age; forasmuch as the fall is not so great from an uneasy being to none at all, as it is from a sprightly and flourishing being to one that is troublesome and painful. The body, bent and bowed, has less force to support a burden; and it is the same with the soul, and therefore it is, that we are to raise her up firm and erect against the power of this adversary. For, as it is impossible she should ever be at rest, while she stands in fear of it; so, if she once can assure herself, she may boast (which is a thing as it were surpassing human condition) that it is impossible that disquiet, anxiety, or fear, or any other disturbance, should inhabit or have any place in her.

"Non vultus instantis tyranni Mente quati solida, neque Auster Dux inquieti turbidus Adriae, Nec fulminantis magna Jovis manus."

She is then become sovereign of all her lusts and passions, mistress of necessity, shame, poverty, and all the other injuries of fortune. Let us, therefore, as many of us as can, get this advantage; 'tis the true and sovereign liberty here on earth, that fortifies us wherewithal to defy violence and injustice, and to contemn prisons and chains.

"In manicis et Compedibus saevo te sub custode tenebo "Ipse Deus, simul atque volam, me solvet. Opinor, Hoc sentit; moriar; mors ultima linea rerum est."

Our very religion itself has no surer human foundation than the contempt of death. Not only the argument of reason invites us to it- for why should we fear to lose a thing, which being lost cannot be lamented?- but, also, seeing we are threatened by so many sorts of death, is it not infinitely worse eternally to fear them all, than once to undergo one of them? And what matters it, when it shall happen, since it is inevitable? To him that told Socrates, "The thirty tyrants have sentenced thee to death;" "And nature them," said he. What a ridiculous thing it is to trouble ourselves about taking the only step that is to deliver us from all trouble! As our birth brought us the birth of all things, so in our death is the death of all things included. And therefore to lament that we shall not he alive a hundred years hence, is the same folly as to be sorry we were not alive a hundred years ago. Death is the beginning of another life. So did we weep, and so much it cost us to enter into this, and so did we put off our former veil in entering into it. Nothing can be a grievance that is but once. Is it reasonable so long to fear a thing that will so soon be despatched? Long life, and short, are by death made all one; for there is no long, nor short, to things that are no more. Aristotle tells us that there are certain little beasts upon the banks of the river Hypanis, that never live above a day: they which die at eight of the clock in the morning, die in their youth, and those that die at five in the evening, in their decrepitude: which of us would not laugh to see this moment of continuance put into the consideration of weal or woe? The most and the least, of ours, in comparison with eternity, or yet with the duration of mountains, rivers, stars, trees, and even of some animals, is no less ridiculous.

But nature compels us to it. "Go out of this world," says she, "as you entered into it; the same pass you made from death to life, without passion or fear, the same, after the same manner, repeat from life to death. Your death is a part of the order of the universe, 'tis a part of the life of the world.

"'Inter se mortales mutua vivunt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Et, quasi cursores, vitai lampada tradunt.'

"Shall I exchange for you this beautiful contexture of things? 'Tis the condition of your creation; death is a part of you, and while you endeavor to evade it, you evade yourselves. This very being of yours that you now enjoy is equally divided between life and death. The day of your birth is one day's advance toward the grave.

"'Prima, quae vitam dedit, hora carpsit.' "'Nascentes morimus, finisque ab origne pendet.'

"All the whole time you live, you purloin from life, and live at the expense of life itself. The perpetual work of your life is but to lay the foundation of death. You are in death, while you are in life, because you still are after death, when you are no more alive; or, if you had rather have it so, you are dead after life, but dying all the while you live; and death handles the dying much more rudely than the dead, and more sensibly and essentially. If you have made your profit of life, you have had enough of it; go your way satisfied.

"'Cur non ut plenus vitae conviva recedis?'

"If you have not known how to make the best use of it, if it was unprofitable to you, what need you to care to lose it, to what end would you desire longer to keep it?

"'Cur amplius addere quaeris, Rursum quod pereat male, et ingratum occidat omne?'

"Life in itself is neither good nor evil; it is the scene of good or evil, as you make it. And, if you have lived a day, you have seen all: one day is equal and like to all other days. There is no other light, no other shade; this very sun, this moon, these very stars, this very order and disposition of things, is the same your ancestors enjoyed, and that shall also entertain your posterity.

"'Non alium videre patres, aliumve nepotes Aspicient.'

"And, come the worst that can come, the distribution and variety of all the acts of my comedy are performed in a year. If you have observed the revolution of my four seasons, they comprehend the infancy, the youth, the virility, and the old age of the world: the year has played his part, and knows no other art but to begin again; it will always be the same thing.

"'Versamur ibidem, atque insumus usque.' "'Atque in se sua per vestigia volvitur annus.'

"I am not prepared to create for you any new recreations.

"'Nam tibi praeterea quod machiner, inveniamque Quod placeat, nihil est; eadem sunt omnia semper.'

"Give place to others, as others have given place to you. Equality is the soul of equity. Who can complain of being comprehended in the same destiny, wherein all are involved. Besides, live as long as you can, you shall by that nothing shorten the space you are to be dead; 'tis all to no purpose; you shall be every whit as long in the condition you so much fear, as if you had died at nurse.

"'Licet quot vis viven do vincere secla, Mors aeterna tamen nihilominus illa manebit.'

"And yet I will place you in such a condition as you shall have no reason to be displeased.

"'In vera nescis nullum fore morte alium te, Qui possit vivus tibi te lugere peremptum, Stansque jacentem.'

"Nor shall you so much as wish for the life you are so concerned about.

"'Nec sibi enim quisquam tum se vitamque requirit. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nec desiderium nostri nos afficit ullum.'

"Death is less to be feared than nothing, if there could be anything less than nothing.

"'Multo... mortem minus ad nos esse putandum, Si minus esse potest, quam quod nihil esse videmus.'

"Neither can it any way concern you, whether you are living or dead: living, by reason that you are still in being; dead because you are no more. Moreover, no one dies before his hour: the time you leave behind was no more yours, than that was lapsed and gone before you came into the world; nor does it any more concern you.

"'Respice enim, quam nil ad nos anteacta vetustas Temporis aeternia fuerit.'

"Wherever your life ends, it is all there. The utility of living consists not in the length of days, but in the use of time; a man may have lived long, and yet lived but a little. Make use of time while it is present with you. It depends upon your will, and not upon the number of days, to have a sufficient length of life. Is it possible you can imagine never to arrive at the place toward which you are continually going? and yet there is no journey but hath its end. And, if company will make it more pleasant or more easy to you, does not all the world go the self-same way?

"'Omnia te, vita perfuncta, sequentur.'

"Does not all the world dance the same brawl that you do? Is there anything that does not grow old, as well as you? A thousand men, a thousand animals, a thousand other creatures, die at the same moment that you die:

"'Nam nox nulla diem, neque noctem aurora sequuta est, Quae non audierit mistos vagitibus aegris Ploratus, mortis comites et funerisiatri.'

"To what end should you endeavor to draw back, if there be no possibility to evade it? you have seen examples enough of those who have been well pleased to die, as thereby delivered from heavy miseries; but have you ever found any who have been dissatisfied with dying? It must, therefore, needs be very foolish to condemn a thing you have neither experimented in your own person, nor by that of any other. Why dost thou complain of me and of destiny? Do we do thee any wrong? Is it for thee to govern us, or for us to govern thee? Though, peradventure thy age may not be accomplished, yet thy life is: a man of low stature is as much a man as a giant: neither men nor their lives are measured by the ell. Chiron refused to be immortal, when he was acquainted with the conditions under which he was to enjoy it, by the god of time itself and its duration, his father Saturn. Do but seriously consider how much more insupportable and painful an immortal life would be to man than what I have already given him. If you had not death, you would externally curse me for having deprived you of it; I have mixed a little bitterness with it, to the end, that seeing of what convenience it is, you might not too greedily and indiscreetly seek and embrace it: and that you might be so established in this moderation, as neither to nauseate life, nor have an antipathy for dying, which I have decreed you shall once do, I have tempered the one and the other between pleasure and pain. It was I that taught Thales, the most eminent of your sages, that to live and to die were indifferent; which made him, very wisely, answer him, 'Why then he did not die?' 'Because,' said he, 'it is indifferent.' Water, earth, air, and fire, and the other parts of this creation of mine, are no more instruments of thy life than they are of thy death. Why dost thou fear thy last day? it contributes no more to thy dissolution, than every one of the rest: the last step is not the cause of lassitude; it does but confess it. Every day travels toward death: the last only arrives at it." These are the good lessons our mother Nature teaches.

I have often considered with myself whence it should proceed, that in war the image of death, whether we look upon it in ourselves or in others, should, without comparison, appear less dreadful than at home in our own houses (for if it were not so, it would be an army of doctors and whining milksops), and that being still in all places the same, there should be, notwithstanding, much more assurance in peasants and the meaner sort of people, than in others of better quality. I believe, in truth, that it is those terrible ceremonies and preparations wherewith we set it out, that more terrify us than the thing itself; a new, quite contrary way of living; the cries of mothers, wives, and children: the visits of astounded and afflicted friends; the attendance of pale and blubbering servants; a dark room, set round with burning tapers; our beds environed with physicians and divines; in sum, nothing but ghostliness and horror round about us: we seem dead and buried already. Children are afraid even of those they are best acquainted with, when disguised in a visor; and so 'tis with us; the visor must be removed as well from things as from persons; that being taken away, we shall find nothing underneath but the very same death that a mean servant, or a poor chambermaid, died a day or two ago, without any manner of apprehension. Happy is the death that leaves us no leisure to prepare things for all this foppery.