of the Creator. It should be a place for nobody but hermits
dwelling in prayer and maceration, or mere born-devils drowning care in
a perpetual carouse.

And yet, when one comes to think upon it calmly, the situation of these
South American citizens forms only a very pale figure for the state of
ordinary mankind. This world itself, travelling blindly and swiftly in
overcrowded space, among a million other worlds travelling blindly and
swiftly in contrary directions, may very well come by a knock that would
set it into explosion like a penny squib. And what, pathologically
looked at, is the human body with all its organs, but a mere bagful of
petards? The least of these is as dangerous to the whole economy as the
ship's powder-magazine to the ship; and with every breath we breathe,
and every meal we eat, we are putting one or more of them in peril. If
we clung as devotedly as some philosophers pretend we do to the abstract
idea of life, or were half as frightened as they make out we are, for
the subversive accident that ends it all, the trumpets might sound by
the hour and no one would follow them into battle--the blue-peter might
fly at the truck, but who would climb into a sea-going ship? Think (if
these philosophers were right) with what a preparation of spirit we
should affront the daily peril of the dinner-table: a deadlier spot than
any battle-field in history, where the far greater proportion of our
ancestors have miserably left their bones! What woman would ever be
lured into marriage, so much more dangerous than the wildest sea? And
what would it be to grow old? For, after a certain distance, every step
we take in life we find the ice growing thinner below our feet, and all
around us and behind us we see our contemporaries going through. By the
time a man gets well into the seventies, his continued existence is a
mere miracle; and when he lays his old bones in bed for the night, there
is an overwhelming probability that he will never see the day. Do the
old men mind it, as a matter of fact? Why, no. They were never merrier;
they have their grog at night, and tell the raciest stories; they hear
of the death of people about their own age, or even younger, not as if
it was a grisly warning, but with a simple child-like pleasure at having
outlived some one else; and when a draught might puff them out like a
guttering candle, or a bit of a stumble shatter them like so much glass,
their old hearts keep sound and unaffr