ilver urn, the paper set
beside the master's plate. Isaiah knew not of such regimen, else he
would not have cried that all flesh is grass, and all the goodliness
thereof as the flower of the field.

Others there are whom poverty precludes from silver, and the narrow
estate of home from daily sustenance on the _Times_. Some study
diuturnity upon two meals a day, or pursue old age by means of "unfired
food," Others devour roots by moonlight, or savagely dine upon a pocket
of raw beans. These are intemperate on water, or bewail the touch of
salt as sacrilege against the sacrifice of eggs. These grovel for nuts
like the Hampshire hog, or impiously celebrate the fruitage by which man
fell. Some cast away their coats, some their hosen, some their hats.
They go barefoot but for sandals. They wander about in sheepskins and
goatskins, eschewing flesh for their food, and vegetables for their
clothing. They plunge distracted into boiling water. Shudderingly, they
break the frosty Serpentine. They absorb the sun's rays like pigeons
upon the housetops, or shiver naked in suburban chambers that they may
recover the barbaric tang. They walk through rivers fully clothed, and
shake their vesture as a dog his coat; or are hydrophobic for their
skins, fearing to wash lest they disturb essential oils. They shave
their heads as a cure for baldness, or in gentle gardens emulate the
raging lion's mane. One dreads to miss his curdled milk by the fraction
of a minute; another, at the semblance of a cold, puts off his supper
for three weeks and a day. One calculates upon longevity by means of
bare knees, another apprehends the approach of death through the orifice
in the palm of a leather glove.

Of course, it is all right. Life is of inestimable value, and nothing
can compensate a corpse for the loss of it. Falstaff knew that, and,
like the Magpie Moth, wisely counterfeited death to avoid the
irretrievable step of dying. Our prudent livers display an equal wisdom,
not exactly counterfeiting death, but living gingerly--living, as it
were, at half-cock, lest life should go off suddenly with a flash and
bang, leaving them nowhere. Of course, they are quite right. Life being
pleasurable, it is well to spread it out as far as it will go. As to
honour, the hoary head in itself is a crown of glory, and when a man
reaches ninety, people will call him wonderful, though for ninety years
he has been a fool. The objects of living are, for the most part,