Non-Fiction > Books > London, 1881 - Virginibus Puerisque, and other papers

1 68 yEs Triplex.
into explosion like a penny squib. And what,
pathologically looked at, is the human body
with all its organs, but a mere bagful of petards ?
The least of these is as dangerous to the whole
economy as the ship's powder-magazine to the
ship ; and with every breath we breathe, and
every meal we eat, we are putting one or more
of them in peril. If we clung as devotedly as
some philosophers pretend we do to the abstract
idea of life, or were half as frightened as they
make out we are, .^fef the subversive accident
that ends it all, the trumpets might sound by
the hour and no one would follow them into
battle — the blue-peter might fly at the truck,
but who would climb into a sea-going ship }
Think (if these philosophers were right) with
what a preparation of spirit we should affront
the daily peril of the dinner-table : a deadlier
spot than any battle-field in history ; where the
far greater proportion of our ancestors have
miserably left their bones ! What woman