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

1 44 Ordered Sottth
now falls out of the little eddy that circulates
in the shallow waters of the sanatorium.
He sees the country people come and go
about their everyday affairs, the foreigners
stream out in goodly pleasure parties ; the
stir of man's activity is all about him, as he
suns himself inertly in some sheltered corner ;
and he looks on with a patriarchal imperson-
ality of interest, such as a man may feel
when he pictures to himself the fortunes of
his remote descendants, or the robust old age
of the oak he has planted over-night.
In this falling aside, in this quietude and
desertion of other men, there is no inhar-
monious prelude to the last quietude and
desertion of the grave ; in this dulness of
the senses there is a gentle preparation for
the final insensibility of death. And to him
the idea of mortality comes in a shape less
violent and harsh than is its wont, less as
an abrupt catastrophe than as a thing of
infinitesimal gradation, and the last step on
a long decline of way. As we turn to and
fro in bed, and every moment the movements