Page:Under the Sun.djvu/359

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See, the tapers are lit! Are you quite ready to die? Then take your way along that spotless. carpet. It will lead you to the “door of the practice of virtue.” Yours is the place of honor on the piled rugs — in the centre of your friends. How keenly they fix their eyes upon you. It is their duty to see that you are dead before those tapers are out. Those tapers cannot last another fifteen minutes. Be seated. Here is your old schoolmate, Kotsuke, coming to you with the dreadful tray. How sternly his lips are closed! You must not speak to him. Stretch out your hand to the glittering knife. Behind you, your relatives are baring their strong arms. You cannot see them, but they are there, and their heavy-handled swords are poised above you. Stretch out your hand. Why hesitate? You must take the knife. Have you it firmly in your grasp? Then strike! Deep to the handle, let the keen blade sink— wait a minute with the knife in the wound that all your friends assembled in the theatre before you may see it is really there — now draw it across your body to the right side — turn the broad blade in the wound, and now trail it slowly upwards.

Are you sickening with pain? ah! your head droops forward, a groan is struggling through the clenched teeth, when swift upon the bending neck descends the merciful sword of a friend!

A Samurai must not be heard to groan from pain. How different from the respectful applause that greets the Japanese self-murderer is the first sentiment of healthy aversion that is aroused in English men and women by the news of a suicide. It is true that sometimes, at the first glance, the preceding circumstances compel our scorn or provoke us into only a disdainful