THE CONFESSION OF A
WATER DRINKER
They tell me of our only Sarah that she keeps, or kept, in full evidence in her living-room the coffin which she predestinated as her ultimate abiding-place. Ascribe this act of innocuous bravado either to her innate youthfulness of disposition, or to her philosopher’s contempt of death, and it shall pass for what it is worth. But it is with anything but a light heart, and with nothing of the philosopher in my nature that I find myself suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, as it were, constrained to read—or write—my own burial service, or, at the least, to be present at my own interment. For it seems
