Page:Essays Vol 1 (Ives, 1925).pdf/138

118 (c) and as the Egyptians, after their festivals, caused a great image of death to be exhibited to the guests by one who cried: “Drink and enjoy yourselves, for when dead you will be like this,” (a) so I have fallen into the habit of having death constantly, not in my mind alone, but on my lips; and there is nothing of which I enquire so eagerly as of the deaths of men, what words they said, what their expression was, and their bearing; nor are there any passages in histories which I read so carefully. (c) This appears by my cramming these pages with examples; and that I have a special fondness for this sort of matter. Were I a maker of books, I should make an annotated record of different deaths. He who should teach men how to die would teach them how to live. Dicearchus made a book with a similar title, but with another and less useful purpose.

(a) I shall be told that the thing itself goes so far beyond one’s idea of it, that the best fencing is at a loss when one reaches that point. Let them say what they will: to think upon it beforehand unquestionably gives one a great advantage; and then, too, is it nothing to go so far as that without emotion and without trembling? Yet more: Nature herself lends us a hand and gives us courage. If it be a sudden and violent death, we have no time to dread it; if it be otherwise, I perceive that, in proportion as I become sick, I feel involuntarily some contempt of life. I find that I have much more difficulty in swallowing the thought of death when I am in health than I have when I am sick, inasmuch as I no longer cling so closely to the pleasures of life, since I begin to lose the habit and enjoyment of them; then I look upon death with a much less terrified vision. This makes me hope that the further I shall draw away from life