tom of exhibiting a skeleton at the feast,
in order to remind the banqueters of the fate that awaited them.
You will remember the other-worldliness of Christian monks and
ascetics who decried this pleasant earth as a vale of tears, and
endeavored to fix the attention of their followers upon the pale
joys of the Christian heaven, and you will wonder, perhaps, that I
should be harking back to these conceptions of the past. I have,
however, no such intention.

The prevailing attitude toward the thought of death is that of
studied neglect. Men wish to face it as little as possible. We know,
of course, what the fate is that awaits us. We know what are the
terms of the compact. Now and again we are momentarily struck
by the pathos of it all; for instance, when we walk through some
crowded thoroughfare on a bright day and reflect that before
many years this entire multitude will have disappeared. The
rosy-cheeked girl who has just passed; the gay young fellow at her
side, full of his hopes, confident of his achievements, acting and
speaking as if the lease of eternity were his; that "grave and
reverend seigneur," clad with dignity and authority--all will have
gone, and others will have taken their places. Yet, as a rule, we are
not much affected by such reflections. When one of our friends has
met with a painless death we are apt to solace ourselves with the
hope that perhaps we shall be as lucky as he; at all events, we
know that when our time comes we must take our turn. Even
those who look forward with apprehension to the last moment,
and who when it approaches, cling desperately to life, are prudent
enough to hold their peace. There is a general understanding that
those who go shall not mar the composure of those who stay, and
that public decorum shall not be disturbed by outcries.

This is the baldly secular view of the matter, and this view, though
based on low considerations, in some respects is sound enough.
And yet I reiterate the opinion that to live as if this hour were our
last--in other words, to frankly face the idea of death--is most
conducive to the spiritual life. It is for the sake of the reflex action
upon life that the practice of coming to a right understanding with
death is so valuable. Take the case of a man who calls on his
physician, and there unexpectedly discovers that he is afflicted with
a fatal malady, and is told that he may have only a few months
longer to live. This visit to the physician ha