Prose Fancies (Second Series) by Richard Le Gallienne
page 109 of 122 (89%)
page 109 of 122 (89%)
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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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