of the
story.

_Epicurus._ Ternissa is slow to admit that even the young can deceive,
much less the old; the gay, much less the serious.

_Leontion._ It is as wise to moderate our belief as our desires.

_Epicurus._ Some minds require much belief, some thrive on little.
Rather an exuberance of it is feminine and beautiful. It acts
differently on different hearts; it troubles some, it consoles others;
in the generous it is the nurse of tenderness and kindness, of heroism
and self-devotion; in the ungenerous it fosters pride, impatience of
contradiction and appeal, and, like some waters, what it finds a dry
stick or hollow straw, it leaves a stone.

_Ternissa._ We want it chiefly to make the way of death an easy one.

_Epicurus._ There is no easy path leading out of life, and few are the
easy ones that lie within it. I would adorn and smoothen the
declivity, and make my residence as commodious as its situation and
dimensions may allow; but principally I would cast under-foot the
empty fear of death.

_Ternissa._ Oh, how can you?

_Epicurus._ By many arguments already laid down: then by thinking that
some perhaps, in almost every age, have been timid and delicate as
Ternissa; and yet have slept soundly, have felt no parent's or
friend's tear upon their faces, no throb against their breasts: in
short, have been in the calmest of all possible conditions, while
those around were in the most deplorable and desperate.

_Ternissa._ It would pain me to die, if it were only at the idea that
any one I love would grieve too much for me.

_Epicurus._ Let the loss of our friends be our only grief, and the
apprehension of displeasing them our only fear.

_Leontion._ No apostrophes! no interjections! Your argument was
unsound; your means futile.

_Epicurus._ Tell me, then, whether the horse of a rider on the road
should not be spurred forward if he started at a shadow.

_Leontion._ Yes.

_Epicurus._ I thought so: it would, however, be better to guide him
quietly up to it, and to show him that it was one. Death is less than
a shadow: it represents nothing, even imperfectly.

_Leontion._ Then at the best what is it? why care about it, think
about it, or remind us that it must befall us? Would you take the same
trouble, when you see my hair entwined with ivy, to make me remember
that, although the leaves are green and pliable, the stem is fragile
and rough, and that before I go to bed I shall have many knots and
entangl