easy seat on the stern of
the vessel, and sat myself down to consider all that Crasweller had
said to me. He and I had parted,--perhaps for ever. I had not been in
England since I was a little child, and I could not but feel now that
I might be detained there by circumstances, or die there, or that
Crasweller, who was ten years my senior, might be dead before I
should have come back. And yet no ordinary farewell had been spoken
between us. In those last words of his he had confined himself to
the Fixed Period, so full had his heart been of the subject, and so
intent had he felt himself to be on convincing me. And what was the
upshot of what he had said? Not that the doctrine of the Fixed Period
was in itself wrong, but that it was impracticable because of the
horrors attending its last moments. These were the solitude in which
should be passed the one last year; the sight of things which would
remind the old man of coming death; and the general feeling that the
business and pleasures of life were over, and that the stillness of
the grave had been commenced. To this was to be added a certainty
that death would come on some prearranged day. These all referred
manifestly to the condition of him who was to go, and in no degree
affected the welfare of those who were to remain. He had not
attempted to say that for the benefit of the world at large the
system was a bad system. That these evils would have befallen
Crasweller himself, there could be no doubt. Though a dozen
companions might have visited him daily, he would have felt the
college to be a solitude, because he would not have been allowed to
choose his promiscuous comrades as in the outer world. But custom
would no doubt produce a cure for that evil. When a man knew that it
was to be so, the dozen visitors would suffice for him. The young
man of thirty travels over all the world, but the old man of seventy
is contented with the comparative confinement of his own town, or
perhaps of his own house. As to the ghastliness of things to be seen,
they could no doubt be removed out of sight; but even that would be
cured by custom. The business and pleasures of life at the prescribed
time were in general but a pretence at business and a reminiscence
of pleasure. The man would know that the fated day was coming, and
would prepare for it with infinitely less of the anxious pain of
uncertainty than in the outer world. The fact that death must come at
the settled day, would no do