Taking one consideration with another, most decidedly not.
I have only met two men of my own age who would live their lives over again. They both cared more for their meals than for anything else in the world—and they have always had four of these every day; sometimes even five! plenty of variety, and never a meal to disagree with them! affaire d'estomac! They simply want to eat all those meals once more. They lived to feed, and to refeed would re‑live!
My meals have never disagreed with me either—but I have always found them monotonous; they have always been so simple and so regular when I've had the ordering of them! Fried soles, chops or steaks, and that sort of thing, and a pint of lager‑beer—no wine for me, thank you; I sell it—and all this just to serve as a mere foundation for a smoke—and a chat with Barty, if possible!
Hardly ever an ache or a pain, and I wouldn't live it all over again! yet I hope to live another twenty years, if only to take Leah's unborn great‑grandchildren to the dentist's, and tip them at school, and treat them to the pantomime and Madame Tussaud's, as I did their mothers and grandmothers before them—or their fathers and grandfathers.
This seems rather inconsistent! For would I care, twenty years hence, to re‑live these coming twenty years? Evidently not—it's out of the question.
So why don't I give up at once? I know how to do it, without pain, without scandal, without even invalidating my life‑insurance, about which I don't care a rap!
Why don't I? why don't you, O middle‑aged reader—with all the infirmities of age before you and all the pleasures of youth behind? Anyhow, we don't, either you or I—and so there's an end on't.
O Pandora! I have promised myself that I would take a great‑grandchild of Barty's on a flying‑machine from Marsfield to London and back in half an hour—and that great‑grandchild can't well be born for several years—perhaps not for another twenty!
And now, gentle reader, I've had my little say, and I'm a good deal better, thanks, and I'll try not to talk about myself any more.
Except just to mention that in the summer of 1876 I contested East Rosherville in the Conservative interest and was successful—and owed my success to the canvassing of Barty and Leah, who had no politics of their own whatever, and would have canvassed for me just as conscientiously if I'd been a Radical, probably more so! For if Barty had permitted himself any politics at all, he would have been a red‑hot Radical, I fear—and his wife would have followed suit. And so, perhaps, would I!