Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1887 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

94 Crabbed Age and Youth
' of cases, never comes at all. Disease and
accident make short work of even the most
prosperous persons ; death costs nothing,
and the expense of a headstone is an incon-
siderable trifle to the happy heir. To be
suddenly snuffed out in the middle of ambi-
tious schemes, is tragical enough at best ;
but when a man has been grudging himself
his own life in the meanwhile, and saving up
everything for the festival that was never to
be, it becomes that hysterically moving sort
of tragedy which lies on the confines of farce.
The victim is dead — and he has cunningly
overreached himself: a combination of ca-
lamities none the less absurd for being grim.
To husband a favourite claret until the batch
turns sour, is not at all an artful stroke of
policy ; and how much more with a whole
cellar — a whole bodily existence ! People
may lay down their lives with cheerfulness
in the sure expectation of a blessed immor-
tality ; but that is a different affair from
giving up youth with all its admirable
pleasures, in the hope of a better quality of