nd spitting at all around it; and I am glad that it hath at
last had wit enough first to _shut the door_ before proceeding to its
horrid tricks.

Touching, by the way, the _moral_ of suicide, it is a way which some
have of _cutting_ the Gordian knot of the difficulties of life; which
having been done, possibly the very first thing made manifest to the
spirit, after taking its mad leap into the dark may be--how very easily
the said knot might have been UNTIED; nay, that it was _on the very
point_ of being untied, if the impatient spirit had stayed only a moment
longer!

I said it was not _impossible_ that Mr. Titmouse might, under the
circumstances alluded to, have done the deed which has called forth the
above natural and profound reflections; but, upon the whole, it is
hardly _probable_; for he knew that by doing so he would (first)
irreparably injure society, by depriving it of an enlightened and
invaluable member; (secondly,) inflict great indignity on his precious
body, of which, during life, he had always taken the most affectionate
care, by consigning it to burial in a cross-road, at night-time, with a
stake run through it,[9] and moreover peril the little soul that had
just leaped out of it, by not having any burial-service said over his
aforesaid remains; and (lastly) lose all chance of enjoying Ten Thousand
a-Year--at least upon the earth. I own I was a little startled (as I
dare say was the pensive reader) at a passage of mournful significance
in Mr. Titmouse's last letter to Messrs. Quirk, Gammon, and Snap,
viz.--"How full of trouble I am, _often thinking of death_, which is the
end of everything;" but on carefully considering the context, I am
disposed to think that the whole was only an astute device of
Titmouse's, either to rouse the fears, or stimulate the feelings, or
excite the hopes of the three arbiters of his destiny to whom it was
addressed. Mr. Gammon, he thought, might be thereby moved to pity; while
Mr. Quirk would probably be operated upon by fears, lest the sad
contingency pointed at might deprive the house of one who would richly
repay their exertions; and by hopes of indefinite advantage, if they
could by any means prevent its happening. That these gentlemen really
_did_ keenly scrutinize, and carefully weigh every expression in that
letter, ridiculous as it was, and contemptible as, I fear, it showed its
writer to be, is certain; but it did not occur to them to compare with
it the spirit,