king
classes, than they were. The question 'Is Life worth Living?' is
one that concerns philosophers and metaphysicians, and not the
persons I have in my mind at all; but the question, 'Do I wish to
be out of it?' is one that is getting answered very widely--and in
the affirmative. This was certainly not the case in the days of our
grand-sires. Which of them ever read those lines--

'For who, to dumb forgetfulness a prey,
This pleasing anxious being e'er resigned,
Left the warm precincts of the cheerful day,
Nor cast one longing lingering look behind?'--

without a sympathetic complacency? This may not have been the best
of all possible worlds to them, but none of them wished to exchange
it, save at the proper time, and for the proper place. Thanks to
overwork, and still more to over-worry, it is not so now. There are
many prosperous persons in rude health, of course, who will ask (with
a virtuous resolution that is sometimes to be deplored), 'Do you
suppose then that I wish to cut my throat?' I certainly do not.
Do not let us talk of cutting throats; though, mind you, the
average of suicides, so admirably preserved by the Registrar-General
and other painstaking persons, is not entirely to be depended upon.
You should hear the doctors at my Inn (in the intervals of their
abuse of their professional brethren) discourse upon this topic--on
that overdose of chloral which poor B. took, and on that injudicious
self-application of chloroform which carried off poor C. With the
law in such a barbarous state in relation to self-destruction, and
taking into account the feelings of relatives, there was, of course,
only one way of wording the certificate, but--and then they shake
their heads as only doctors can, and help themselves to port, though
they know it is poison to them.

It is an old joke that annuitants live for ever, but no annuity
ever had the effect of prolonging life which the present assurance
companies have. How many a time, I wonder, in these later years,
has a hand been stayed, with a pistol or 'a cup of cold poison' in
it, by the thought, 'If I do this, my family will lose the money I
am insured for, besides the premiums.' This feeling is altogether
different from that which causes Jeannette and Jeannot in their
Paris attic to light their charcoal fire, stop up the chinks with
their love-letters, and die (very disreputably) 'c