nearly four months.

The medical profession, which had pronounced my death sentence,
reiterated it steadily--has, indeed, done so now this ten years. Towards
the end of those four months, however, dying lost its freshness for me.
I began to detect a certain habitual quality in my service. I had
exhausted all my memorable remarks upon the subject, and the strain
began to tell upon all of us.

One day in the spring-time I crawled out alone, carefully wrapped, and
with a stick, to look once more--perhaps for the last time--on sky and
earth, and the first scattered skirmishers of the coming army of
flowers. It was a day of soft wind, when the shadows of the clouds go
sweeping over the hills. Quite casually I happened upon a girl
clambering over a hedge, and her dress had caught in a bramble, and the
chat was quite impromptu and most idyllic. I remember she had three or
four wood anemones in her hand--"wind stars" she called them, and I
thought it a pretty name. And we talked of this and that, with a light
in our eyes, as young folks will.

I quite forgot I was a Doomed Man. I surprised myself walking home with
a confident stride that jarred with the sudden recollection of my
funereal circumstances. For a moment I tried in vain to think what it
was had slipped my memory. Then it came, colourless and remote. "Oh!
Death.... He's a Bore," I said; "I've done with him," and laughed to
think of having done with him.

"And why not so?" said I.

THE END

_This book appeared some years ago at another price and in another
form. The Publisher believes that its present guise will bring it
within the reach of all and sundry, who, while delighting in the
marriage of_ wit _with_ wisdom, _cannot complete the trilogy with
the third desideratum of_ wealth.

PRINTED BY MORRISON AND GIBB LIMITED, EDINBURGH

[Illustration: Front Book Cover]

CERTAIN
PERSONAL
MATTERS

By

H.G. WELLS
_Author of the "Time Machine"_

LONDON
T. FISHER UNWIN
PATERNOSTER SQUARE

_Price One Shilling_
_Also issued in Cloth, price 2s._

[Illustration: Back Book Cover]

To Furnish Smartly Without Disturbing Capital

[Illustration: BED-TIME]

By means of a perfectly simple plan (commended by the Editor of _Truth_
and many others) you may furnish your House, Chambers, or Flat
throughout,--and to the extent of Linen, Silver, and Cutlery,--_Out of
Income without drawing upon Capital_ by dividin