Then an idea possessed me. There was but one way. I could die. There was a
little phial of laudanum in the medicine-cupboard that always leered at me
from among the other bottles like a serpent's eye. Thrice happy thought!
Who would miss such a poor imitation? Even the mere soap-vending tradesmen
bid us 'beware of imitations.' Dark wine of forgetfulness.... No, that was
a quotation. However, here was the phial. I drew the cork, inhaled for a
moment the hard dry odour of poppies, and prepared to drink. But just at
that moment I seemed to hear a horrid little laugh coming out of the
bottle, and a voice chuckled at my ear: 'You ass, do you call that
original?' It was so absurd that I burst out into hysterical laughter.
Here had I been about to do the most 'banal' thing of all. Was there
anything in the world quite so commonplace as suicide?

And with the good spirits of laughter came peace. Nay, why worry to be
'original'? Why such haste to be unlike the rest of the world, when the
best things of life were manifestly those which all men had in common? Was
love less sweet because my next-door neighbour knew it as well? Would the
same reason make death less bitter? And were not those tender diminutives
all the more precious, because their vowels had been rounded for us by the
sweet lips of lovers dead and gone?--sainted jewels, still warm from the
beat of tragic bosoms, flowers which their kisses had freighted with
immortal meanings.

And then I bethought me how the meadow-daisies were one as the other, and
how, when the pearly shells of the dog rose settled on the hedge like a
flight of butterflies, one was as the other; how the birds sang alike, how
star was twin with star, and in peas is no distinction. My rhetoric
stopped as I was about to say 'as wife is to wife'--for I thought I would
first kiss her and see: and lo! I was once more perplexed, for as I looked
down into her eyes, simple and blue and deep, as the sky is simple and
blue and deep, I declared her to be the only woman in the world--which was
obviously not exact. But it was true, for all that.

FRACTIONAL HUMANITY

Mankind, in its heavy fashion, has chosen to mock the tailor with the
fact--the indubitable fact--that he is but the ninth part of a man. Yet,
after all, at this time of day, it seems more of a compliment than a gibe.
To be a whole ninth of a man! Few of _us_, when we ponder it, can boast so
much. Take, for instance, that other proverbial