world at large, or at least to that part of it which knew him or
was interested. The tragedy of the thing did not oppress him. A
thousand times in his life he had discovered that humor and
tragedy were very closely related, and that there were times when
only the breadth of a hair separated the two. Many times he had
seen a laugh change suddenly to tears, and tears to laughter.

The tableau, as it presented itself about his bedside now, amused
him. Its humor was grim, but even in these last hours of his life
he appreciated it. He had always more or less regarded life as a
joke--a very serious joke, but a joke for all that--a whimsical
and trickful sort of thing played by the Great Arbiter on humanity
at large; and this last count in his own life, as it was solemnly
and tragically ticking itself off, was the greatest joke of all.
The amazed faces that stared at him, their passing moments of
disbelief, their repressed but at times visible betrayals of
horror, the steadiness of their eyes, the tenseness of their lips
--all added to what he might have called, at another time, the
dramatic artistry of his last great adventure.

That he was dying did not chill him, or make him afraid, or put a
tremble into his voice. The contemplation of throwing off the mere
habit of breathing had never at any stage of his thirty-six years
of life appalled him. Those years, because he had spent a
sufficient number of them in the raw places of the earth, had
given him a philosophy and viewpoint of his own, both of which he
kept unto himself without effort to impress them on other people.
He believed that life itself was the cheapest thing on the face of
all the earth. All other things had their limitations.