omewhere inside me, I am in the most robust health.

But this same little pain has been diagnosed by the Faculty as the
symptom of an obscure disease. An operation, they tell me, would kill
me on the spot. What it is called I cannot for the life of me remember.
They gave it a kind of lingering name, which I wrote down on my
shirt-cuff.

The name or characteristics of the thing, however, do not matter a fig.
I have always hated people who talked about their insides, and I am not
going to talk about mine, even to myself. Clearly, if it is only going
to last me six months, it is not worth talking about. But the quaint
fact of its brief duration is worth the attention of a contemplative
mind.

It is in order perfectly to focus this attention that I have come to
Murglebed-on-Sea. Here I am alone with the murk and the mud and my own
indrawn breath of life. There are no flowers, blue sky, smiling eyes,
and dainty faces--none of the adventitious distractions of the
earth. There are no Blue-books. Before the Faculty made their jocular
pronouncement I had been filling my head with statistics on pauper
lunacy so as to please my constituency, in which the rate has increased
alarmingly of late years. Perhaps that is why I found myself their
representative in Parliament. I was to father a Bill on the subject next
session. Now the labour will fall on other shoulders. I interest myself
in pauper lunacy no more. A man requires less flippant occupation for
the premature sunset of his days. Well, in Murglebed I can think, I
can weigh the _pros_ and _cons_ of existence with an even mind, I can
accustom myself to the concept of a Great Britain without Simon de Gex.
M.P.

Of course, when I go I shall "cast one longing, lingering look behind."
I don't particularly want to die. In fact, having otherwise the prospect
of an entertaining life, I regard my impending dissolution in the light
of a grievance. But I am not afraid. I shall go through the dismal
formality with a graceful air and as much of a smile on my face as the
pain in my inside will physically permit.

My dear but somewhat sober-sided friend Marcus Aurelius says: "Let death
surprise me when it will, and where it will, I may be _eumoiros_, or
a happy man, nevertheless. For he is a happy man who in his lifetime
dealeth unto himself a happy lot and portion. A happy lot and portion in
good inclinations of the soul, good desires, good actions."

The word _eumoiros_ according to t