flat of your back.

"Suppose you to be dead--what would happen? You would leave debts,
for, although you are solvent, you are only solvent because you have
the knack of always putting your hand on money, and death would
automatically make you insolvent. You are one of those brave, jolly
fellows who live up to their income. It is true that, in deference to
fashion, you are now insured, but for a trifling and inadequate sum
which would not yield the hundredth part of your present income. It is
true that there is your business. But your business would be naught
without you. You are your business. Remove yourself from it, and the
residue is negligible. Your son, left alone with it, would wreck it in
a year through simple ignorance and clumsiness; for you have kept him
in his inexperience like a maiden in her maidenhood. You say that you
desired to spare him. Nothing of the kind. You were merely jealous, of
your authority, and your indispensability. You desired fervently that
all and everybody should depend on yourself....

"Conceive that three years have passed and that you are in fact dead.
You are buried; you are lying away over there in the cold dark. The
funeral is done. The friends are gone. But your family is just as
alive as ever. Disaster has not killed it, nor even diminished its
vitality. It wants just as much to eat and drink as it did before
sorrow passed over it. Look through the sod. Do you see that child
there playing with a razor? It is your eldest son at grips with your
business. Do you see that other youngster striving against a wolf with
a lead pencil for weapon? It is your second son. Well, they are males,
these two, and must manfully expect what they get. But do you see
these four creatures with their hands cut off, thrust out into the
infested desert? They are your wife and your daughters. You cut their