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Prose Fancies (Second Series) by Richard Le Gallienne
page 109 of 122 (89%)
SCRIPTOR. Less than you think, my dear Lector. Besides, you are really
too young to know. It is true that, as years go, you are ten years my
senior, but what of that? You have that vigorous health which is the
secret of perpetual youth. You have not yet realised decay, not to speak
of death. The immortality of the soul is a question wide of you, who
have as yet practically no doubt of the immortality of the body. But
I--well, it would be melodramatic to say that I face death every day.
The metaphor applies but to desperate callings and romantic complaints.
To some Death comes like a footpad, suddenly, and presents his
pistol--and the smoke that curls upward from his empty barrel is your
soul.

To another he comes featureless, a stealthily accumulating London fog,
that slowly, slowly chokes the life out of you, without allowing you the
consolation of a single picturesque moment, a single grand attitude. For
you, probably, Death will only come when you die. I have to live with
him as well. I shall smoulder for years, you will be carried to heaven,
like Enoch, in a beautiful lightning.

'A simple child
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What can it know of Death?'

That's you, my dear Lector, for all your forty years.

LECTOR. All the more reason, Scriptor, that you should desire a
hereafter. You sometimes talk of the work you would do if you were a
robust Philistine such as I. Would it not be worth while to live
again, if only to make sure of that _magnum opus_--just to realise
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