Tell A Man Of A
Hundred Humdrum Lives Which Run Their Quiet Contented Course
In This Village, And The Monotonous Unmoving Story, Or Hundred
Stories, Will Go In At One Ear And Out At The Other.
Therefore
such stories are not told and not remembered.
But that which
stirs our pity and terror - the frustrate life, the glorious
promise which was not fulfilled, the broken hearts and broken
fortunes, and passion, crime, remorse, retribution - all this
prints itself on the mind, and every such life is remembered
for ever and passed on from generation to generation. But it
would really form only one brief chapter in the long, long
history of the village life with its thousand chapters.
The truth is, if we live in fairly natural healthy condition,
we are just as happy as the lower animals. Some philosopher
has said that the chief pleasure in a man's life, as in that
of a cow, consists in the processes of mastication,
deglutition, and digestion, and I am very much inclined to
agree with him. The thought of death troubles us very little
- we do not believe in it. A familiar instance is that of the
consumptive, whose doctor and friends have given him up and
wait but to see the end, while he, deluded man, still sees
life, an illimitable, green, sunlit prospect, stretching away
to an infinite distance before him.
Death is a reality only when it is very near, so close on us
that we can actually hear its swift stoaty feet rustling over
the dead leaves, and for a brief bitter space we actually know
that his sharp teeth will presently be in our throat.
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