, the jest is frozen on
the Clown's lips, and the hand of the filching Pantaloon is arrested in
the act. Wherever death looks, _there_ is silence and trembling. But
although on every man he will one day or another look, he is coy of
revealing himself till the appointed time. He makes his approaches
like an Indian warrior, under covers and ambushes. We have our parts
to play, and he remains hooded till they are played out. We are
agitated by our passions, we busily pursue our ambitions, we are
acquiring money or reputation, and all at once, in the centre of our
desires, we discover the "Shadow feared of man." And so nature fools
the poor human mortal evermore. When she means to be deadly, she
dresses her face in smiles; when she selects a victim, she sends him a
poisoned rose. There is no pleasure, no shape of good fortune, no form
of glory in which death has not hid himself, and waited silently for
his prey.

And death is the most ordinary thing in the world. It is as common as
births; it is of more frequent occurrence than marriages and the
attainment of majorities. But the difference between death and other
forms of human experience lies in this, that we can gain no information
about it. The dead man is wise, but he is silent. We cannot wring his
secret from him. We cannot interpret the ineffable calm which gathers
on the rigid face. As a consequence, when our thought rests on death
we are smitten with isolation and loneliness. We are without company
on the dark road; and we have advanced so far upon it that we cannot
hear the voices of our friends. It is in this sense of loneliness,
this consciousness of identity and nothing more, that the terror of
dying consists. And yet, compared to that road, the most populous
thoroughfare of London or Pekin is a desert. What enumerator will take
for us the census of dead? And this matter of death and dying, like
most things else in the world, may be exaggerated by our own fears and
hopes. Death, terrible to look forward to, may be pleasant even to
look back at. Could we be admitted to the happy fields, and hear the
conversations which blessed spirits hold, one might discover that to
conquer death a man has but to die; that by that act terror is softened
into familiarity, and that the remembrance of death becomes but as the
remembrance of yesterday. To these fortunate ones death may be but a
date, and dying a subject fruitful in comparisons, a matter on whic