"Ye-es," said they. "Wasn't it shocking?"
"Shocking?" I said. "Get out of this place. Go forth, run about and see what death really means. You have described such dying as a god might envy and a king might pay half his ransom to make certain of. Wait till you have seen men—strong men of thirty-five, with little children, die at two days' notice, penniless and alone, and seen it not once, but twenty times; wait till you have seen the young girl die within a fortnight of the wedding; or the lover within three days of his marriage; or the mother—sixty little minutes—before her son can come to her side; wait till you hesitate before handling your daily newspaper for fear of reading of the death of some young man that you have dined with, drank with, shot with, lent money to and borrowed money from, and tested to the uttermost—till you dare not hope for the death of an old man, but, when you are strongest, count up the tale of your acquaintances and friends, wondering how many will be alive six months hence. Wait till you have heard men calling in the death hour on kin that cannot come; till you have dined with a man one night and seen him buried on the next. Then you can begin to whimper about loneliness and change and desolation." Here I foamed at the mouth.
"And do you mean to say," drawled a young gentleman, "that there is any society in which that sort of holocaust goes on?"
"I do," said I. "It's not society; it's life." And they laughed.
But this is the old tale of Pharaoh's chariot-wheel and flying-fish.
If I tell them yarns, they say: "How true! How true!" If I try to present the truth, they say: "What superb imagination!"
But you understand, don't you?
FOOTNOTES:
[23] "Turnovers," No. IX.