e tradesman ghoul. "Behold the names of me--Slap & Dash
here, the Ugliness Company there, and this the work of the Cheap and
Elegant Funeral Association. This is where we slew the art of sculpture.
These are our trophies that sculpture is no more. All this marble might
have been beautiful, all this sorrow might have been expressive, had it
not been for us. See, this is our border, No. A 5, and our pedestal No.
E, and our second quality urn, along of a nice appropriate text--a
pretty combination and a cheap one. Or we can do it you better in border
A 3, and pedestal C, and a larger urn or a hangel----"

The meditative man is seized with a dismal horror, and retreats to the
gates. Even there a wooden advertisement grins broadly at him in his
discomfiture, and shouts a name athwart his route. And so down the
winding road to the valley, and then up Parliament Hill towards
Hampstead and its breeze-whipped ponds. And the mind of him is full of a
dim vision of days that have been, when sculptor and stonemason were
one, when the artist put his work in the porch for all the world to see,
when people had leisure to think how things should be done and heart to
do them well, when there was beauty in the business of life and dignity
in death. And he wonders rather hopelessly if people will ever rise up
against these damnable tradesmen who ruin our arts, make our lives
costly and dismal, and advertise, advertise even on our graves.

HOW I DIED

It is now ten years ago since I received my death warrant. All these ten
years I have been, and I am, and shall be, I hope, for years yet, a
Doomed Man. It only occurred to me yesterday that I had been
dodging--missing rather than dodging--the common enemy for such a space
of time. _Then_, I know, I respected him. It seemed he marched upon me,
inexorable, irresistible; even at last I felt his grip upon me. I bowed
in the shadow. And he passed. Ten years ago, and once since, he and I
have been very near. But now he seems to me but a blind man, and we,
with all our solemn folly of medicine and hygiene, but players in a game
of Blind Man's Buff. The gaunt, familiar hand comes out suddenly,
swiftly, this time surely? And it passes close to my shoulder; I hear
someone near me cry, and it is over.... Another ream of paper; there is
time at least for the Great Book still.

Very close to the tragedy of life is the comedy, brightest upon the very
edge of the dark, and I remember now with a q