some stage people so delicate that it is next door to impossible to
keep them alive.

The inconvenient husband is a most pathetic example of this. Medical
science is powerless to save that man when the last act comes round;
indeed, we doubt whether medical science, in its present state of
development, could even tell what is the matter with him or why he
dies at all. He looks healthy and robust enough and nobody touches
him, yet down he drops, without a word of warning, stone-dead, in the
middle of the floor--he always dies in the middle of the floor. Some
folks like to die in bed, but stage people don't. They like to die on
the floor. We all have our different tastes.

The adventuress herself is another person who dies with remarkable
ease. We suppose in her case it is being so used to it that makes her
so quick and clever at it. There is no lingering illness and doctors'
bills and upsetting of the whole household arrangements about her
method. One walk round the stage and the thing is done.

All bad characters die quickly on the stage. Good characters take a
long time over it, and have a sofa down in the drawing-room to do it
on, and have sobbing relatives and good old doctors fooling around
them, and can smile and forgive everybody. Bad stage characters have
to do the whole job, dying speech and all, in about ten seconds, and
do it with all their clothes on into the bargain, which must make it
most uncomfortable.

It is repentance that kills off the bad people in plays. They always
repent, and the moment they repent they die. Repentance on the stage
seems to be one of the most dangerous things a man can be taken with.