either assumed or affected. No one
can really hold the unsparing leveller--dreaded of all--in contempt. As
to pretended wearisomeness of life, laying aside the love of life and
fear of death, which are common to all mankind, there are habits and
ties of affection, joys and hopes that never depart from us and make us
cling to existence.

There are, no doubt, pains and sufferings which make many almost wish
for the time being for death as a release; but these pass away. Time
assuages all grief, as Nature relieves suffering beyond endurance by
fainting and insensibility. Man may nerve himself to death or become
resigned to it and meet it even with cheerfulness; and he may, in all
sincerity of heart, offer up his life to his Maker to save that of a
beloved one; but there is a latent--an unacknowledged--yet an
irrepressible reserve in such frames of mind.

Few men can prepare for death, or offer themselves up for a sacrifice,
without feelings of a mixed nature playing a part in the act; whether
forced or springing from self-abnegation. As to suicide, it is
inevitably accompanied by certain--albeit various and different--degrees
of mental alienation or disease. No one who is in a really healthy state
of mind, whose faculties are perfectly balanced, or who is at peace with
God and man, commits suicide. The temporary exaltation of grief,
despondency or disappointment produces as utter a state of insanity as
disease itself.

Man, as a rule, desires to live. It is part of his nature to do so; and
exceptions to the rule are rare and unnatural--so much so that they in
all cases imply a certain degree of mental alienation. Even the
weariness, lassitude and despondency which lead some to talk of death as
a release is mainly to be met with in the pampered and the idle. Such
feelings, no doubt, take possession also of the poor and the lowly; but
that, mostly, when there is no work or no incitement to it. There is
always joy and happiness in work and in doing one's duty.

It is then the normal condition to wish to live, and a most abnormal one
to wish to die; and with many there is even a further aspiration, and
that is to prolong a life which, with all its drawbacks, is to so many a
desirable state of things.

Examples of rare longevity are carefully treasured up and even placed on
record. As whenever a human being is carried away, causes from which we
are supposed to be free, or against which we take precautions, are
complacent