HOW TO DIE 



can find nothing to praise in your efforts, posterity will 

 never ferret out your merits. A posthumous bequest 

 may, indeed, perpetuate your mere name but can never 

 change the estimate of your character that was formed 

 while you were living. 



All this would be somewhat lacking in pertinency were 

 it not that the love of approbation of our fellows is one 

 of the most profound and universal traits of the hu- 

 man mind. No normal person would prefer that 

 people should think ill of him ; and most abnormal ones 

 are equally sedulous to hide their delinquencies behind 

 a mask of seeming creditability. Never the pessimist 

 or cynic so hardened as not to shrink before the taunts 

 and criticisms of his kind. 



And if taunt and gibe were to fail, there remains the 

 deadly weapon Contempt, which, as the French prov- 

 erb has it, will pierce the shell of a tortoise. Moreover, 

 the worst shaft of contumely is that which the unworthy 

 man launches against himself. Whatever his pose 

 before the world, rest assured that the contemptible 

 person knows his own littleness. The acid of his own 

 self-estimate eats into his soul. Though he smile and 

 smile he knows himself to be a villain, even as the world 

 knows it also; and there is no mirth in his laughter. 

 That inward shadow of the spectre of ill-doing, like the 

 outward shadow of his own body, no man may escape. 



But, fortunately, just as inescapable is the inward 

 radiance of well-doing. The deed of true charity, ex- 

 ecuted though it be so silently that the left hand know 

 not of the right hand's doing, none the less surely glad- 



1*3] 



