ordinary pursuits, the buzzing of the parson in the ear, the fading of the casement into that “glimmering square”—­should we not all go a long way round to seek so merciful a deliverance?  “I will not die in my bed like a cow!” cried the Northumbrian king, and was set on his feet in full armour to confront the Arch Fear face to face.  There was some poor comfort in a pose like that; it was better than our helpless collapse into a middle-aged cradle, with pap-boat for feeding-bottle, and a last sleep in the nurse’s arms, younger and less muscular than our own.  But how much finer to die like Romeo with a kiss, quick as the true apothecary’s drugs; to sink like Shelley in the blue water, with mind still full of the Greek poet whom he tucked against his heart; to pass hot with fever, like Byron, from the height of fame, while thunder presaged to the mountaineers the loss of their great champion in freedom’s war!

There is no question of it; these are axioms that all mankind is agreed upon.  Every mortal soul would choose a quick and impassioned death; all admire a certain recklessness, an indifference to personal safety or existence, especially in the old, to whom recklessness is most natural, since they have less of life to risk.  That was why the crowd cheered Mr. James Tomkinson as he trotted to the starting-post, and that was why everybody envied his rapid and victorious end.  In his Tales from a Field Hospital, Sir Frederick Treves told of a soldier who was brought down from Spion Kop as a mere fragment, his limbs shattered, his face blown away, incapable of speech or sight.  When asked if he had any message to send home before he died, he wrote upon the paper, “Did we win?” In those words lives the very spirit of that enviable death which all men think they long for—­the death which takes no thought of self, and swallows up fear in victory.  Such a man Stevenson would have delighted to include in his brave roll-call, and of him those final, well-known words in Aes Triplex might have been written: 

“In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe on the highest point of being, he passes at a bound on to the other side.  The noise of the mallet and chisel is scarcely quenched, the trumpets are hardly done blowing, when, trailing with him clouds of glory, this happy-starred, full-blooded spirit shoots into the spiritual land.”

Yes, it is all very beautiful, and all very true.  Stevenson himself, like Caesar, received the death he wished for, and, whether in reason or in passion, every soul among us would agree that death in the midst of life is the most desirable end.  And yet—­and yet—­we hardly know how it is, but, as a matter of fact, we do not seek it, and when the thing comes our way, we prefer, if possible, to walk in the opposite direction.  The Territorial may sing himself hoarse with his prayer to fall like a soldier, but when the bullets begin to wail around him, it is a thousand to one that he will duck his head.