he above definition, tickles my fancy.
I would give a great deal to be eumoirous. What a thing to say: "I have
achieved eumoiriety,"--namely the quintessence of happy-fatedness dealt
unto oneself by a perfect altruism!

I don't think that hitherto my soul has been very evilly inclined, my
desires base, or my actions those of a scoundrel. Still, the negatives
do not qualify one for eumoiriety. One wants something positive. I
have an idea, therefore, of actively dealing unto myself a happy lot or
portion according to the Marcian definition during the rest of the time
I am allowed to breathe the upper air. And this will be fairly easy;
for no matter how excellently a man's soul may be inclined to the
performance of a good action, in ninety cases out of a hundred he is
driven away from it by dread of the consequences. Your moral teachers
seldom think of this--that the consequences of a good action are often
more disastrous than those of an evil one. But if a man is going to die,
he can do good with impunity. He can simply wallow in practical virtue.
When the boomerang of his beneficence comes back to hit him on the
head--_he won't be there to feel it_. He can thus hoist Destiny with its
own petard, and, besides, being eumoirous, can spend a month or two in a
peculiarly diverting manner. The more I think of the idea the more am
I in love with it. I am going to have a seraph of a time. I am going to
play the archangel.

I shall always have pleasant memories of Murglebed. Such an idea could
not have germinated in any other atmosphere. In the scented groves of
sunny lands there would have been sown Seeds of Regret, which would have
blossomed eventually into Flowers of Despair. I should have gone about
the world, a modern Admetus, snivelling at my accursed luck, without
even the chance of persuading a soft-hearted Alcestis to die for me. I
should have been a dismal nuisance to society.

"Bless you," I cried this afternoon, waving, as I leaned against a
post, my hand to the ambient mud, "Renniker was wrong! You are not a
God-forsaken place. You are impregnated with divine inspiration."

A muddy man in a blue jersey and filthy beard who occupied the next post
looked at me and spat contemptuously. I laughed.

"If you were Marcus Aurelius," said I, "I would make a joke--a short
life and an eumoiry one--and he would have looked as pained as you."

"What?" he bawled. He was to windward of me.

I knew that if I repeated my obser