y of death. What
should I say to him? I should say: "God liveth: thou art not thine own
but his. Bear thy hunger, thy horror in his name. I in his name will
help thee out of them, as I may. To go before he calleth thee, is to say
'Thou forgettest,' unto him who numbereth the hairs of thy head. Stand
out in the cold and the sleet and the hail of this world, O son of man,
till thy Father open the door and call thee. Yea, even if thou knowest
him not, stand and wait, lest there should be, after all, such a loving
and tender one, who, for the sake of a good with which thou wilt be
all-content, and without which thou never couldst be content, permits
thee there to stand--for a time--long to his sympathizing as well as to
thy suffering heart."'

Here Falconer paused, and when he spoke again it was from the
ordinary level of conversation. Indeed I fancied that he was a little
uncomfortable at the excitement into which his feelings had borne him.

'Not many of them could understand this, I dare say: but I think most of
them could feel it without understanding it. Certainly the "belly with
good capon lined" will neither understand nor feel it. Suicide is a sin
against God, I repeat, not a crime over which human laws have any hold.
In regard to such, man has a duty alone--that, namely, of making it
possible for every man to live. And where the dread of death is not
sufficient to deter, what can the threat of punishment do? Or what great
thing is gained if it should succeed? What agonies a man must have gone
through in whom neither the horror of falling into such a river, nor
of the knife in the flesh instinct with life, can extinguish the vague
longing to wrap up his weariness in an endless sleep!'

'But,' I remarked, 'you would, I fear, encourage the trade in suicide.
Your kindness would be terribly abused. What would you do with the
pretended suicides?'

'Whip them, for trifling with and trading upon the feelings of their
kind.'

'Then you would drive them to suicide in earnest.'

'Then they might be worth something, which they were not before.'

'We are a great deal too humane for that now-a-days, I fear. We don't
like hurting people.'

'No. We are infested with a philanthropy which is the offspring of our
mammon-worship. But surely our tender mercies are cruel. We don't like
to hang people, however unfit they may be to live amongst their fellows.
A weakling pity will petition for the life of the worst murderer--but