“Ah,” returned Mr. Doomer, “very shocking. He was quite unprepared to die.”
“Do you think so?” I said, “I’m awfully sorry to hear it.”
“Quite unprepared,” he answered. “I had reason to know it as one of his executors,—everything is confusion,—nothing signed,—no proper power of attorney,—codicils drawn up in blank and never witnessed,—in short, sir, no sense apparently of the nearness of his death and of his duty to be prepared.
“I suppose,” I said, “poor Podge didn’t realise that he was going to die.”
“Ah, that’s just it,” resumed Mr. Doomer with something like sternness, “a man OUGHT to realise it. Every man ought to feel that at any moment,—one can’t tell when,—day or night,—he may be called upon to meet his,”—Mr. Doomer paused here as if seeking a phrase—“to meet his Financial Obligations, face to face. At any time, sir, he may be hurried before the Judge,—or rather his estate may be,—before the Judge of the probate court. It is a solemn thought, sir. And yet when I come here I see about me men laughing, talking, and playing billiards, as if there would never be a day when their estate would pass into the hands of their administrators and an account must be given of every cent.”
“But after all,” I said, trying to fall in with his mood, “death and dissolution must come to all of us.”
“That’s just it,” he said solemnly. “They’ve dissolved the tobacco people, and they’ve dissolved the oil people and you can’t tell whose turn it may be next.”
Mr. Doomer was silent a moment and then resumed, speaking in a tone of humility that was almost reverential.
“And yet there is a certain preparedness for death, a certain fitness to die that we ought all to aim at. Any man can at least think solemnly of the Inheritance Tax, and reflect whether by a contract inter vivos drawn in blank he may not obtain redemption; any man if he thinks death is near may at least divest himself of his purely speculative securities and trust himself entirely to those gold bearing bonds of the great industrial corporations whose value will not readily diminish or pass away.” Mr. Doomer was speaking with something like religious rapture.
“And yet what does one see?” he continued. “Men affected with fatal illness and men stricken in years occupied still with idle talk and amusements instead of reading the financial newspapers,—and at the last carried away with scarcely time perhaps to send for their brokers when it is already too late.”