I mean to keep those bullets for pessimists--pills for pale people.
And in this way I want to walk the world like a wonderful surprise--
to float as idly as the thistledown, and come as silently as the sunrise;
not to be expected any more than the thunderbolt, not to be
recalled any more than the dying breeze. I don't want people to
anticipate me as a well-known practical joke. I want both my gifts
to come virgin and violent, the death and the life after death.
I am going to hold a pistol to the head of the Modern Man. But I
shall not use it to kill him--only to bring him to life.
I begin to see a new meaning in being the skeleton at the feast.'
"`You can scarcely be called a skeleton,' said Dr. Eames, smiling.
"`That comes of being so much at the feast,' answered the massive youth.
`No skeleton can keep his figure if he is always dining out.
But that is not quite what I meant: what I mean is that I caught
a kind of glimpse of the meaning of death and all that--the skull
and cross-bones, the ~memento mori~. It isn't only meant to remind
us of a future life, but to remind us of a present life too.
With our weak spirits we should grow old in eternity if we were not kept
young by death.
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