ON LIVING AGAIN


A little group of men, all of whom had achieved conspicuous success in
life, were recently talking after dinner round the fire in the smoking-room
of a London club. They included an eminent lawyer, a politician whose name
is a household word, a well-known divine, and a journalist. The talk
traversed many themes, and arrived at that very familiar proposition: If it
were in your power to choose, would you live this life again? With one
exception the answer was a unanimous "No." The exception, I may remark, was
not the divine. He, like the majority, had found one visit to the play
enough. He did not want to see it again.

The question, I suppose, is as old as humanity. And the answer is old too,
and has always, I fancy, resembled that of our little group round the
smoking-room fire. It is a question that does not present itself until we
are middle-aged, for the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts, and
life then stretches out in such an interminable vista as to raise no
question of its recurrence. It is when you have reached the top of the pass
and are on the downward slope, with the evening shadows falling over the
valley and the church tower and with the end of the journey in view, that
the question rises unbidden to the lips. The answer does not mean that the
journey has not been worth while. It only means that the way has been long
and rough, that we are footsore and tired, and that the thought of rest is
sweet. It is nature's way of reconciling us to our common lot. She has
shown her child all the pageant of life, and now prepares him for his
"patrimony of a little mould"--

Thou hast made his mouth
Avid of all dominion and all mightiness,