Now it is to be noted that I have no recollection of losing consciousness of life-only of regaining an existence that seemed not worth resuming.

The inference is, again, that the actual dying is about the easiest thing we do.

Consequent on this wound, I have died a number of times. Some of my departures have been lapses into unconsciousness due to weakness, and five have been by the chloroform route. These milder takings-off, like the more strenuous ones, yielded no recollection of the instant or of the event of departure. I was, and then I was not, and only the returning to life is memorable

not the quitting of it.

Even those anticipated endings, where chloroform, and operatingrooms, and Ku-Klux-Klan-like attendants, and various other supposedly terrifying appurtenances were involved, have lacked at the stickingpoint that elemental thrill with which they are popularly credited.

The hours immediately before an operation are not pleasant. One has almost the exact sensations experienced while waiting to go into action, which, in turn, differ no whit from those I used to have at college before a cross-country race in which I was a participant. Once away from the mark, once over the top, or when one is at last on the table, it is all the same a rather pleasant combination of sensations,

focused on the determination to extend every faculty to the utmost to attain the desired end.

But notice-such unpleasantness has nothing to do with dying. One always hopes to live through an action, and no one expects to die in a track meet; yet the anticipatory sensations are the same. But, they are sensations of living, not of dying.

On the table, the last thing you hear is the reassuring, 'Breathe deeply now - it won't take a minute'; and the next thing is, 'I think he's coming out now' - this some hours later. Dying does n't enter at all, consciously or subconsciously; and much less does the delightful wafting into oblivion envisage Death, though it must be his twin brother.

So I submit that the case against dying is proved. The moment of our release brings no fear; no horror; no regret. The thread does not snap; it parts as softly as a spider's web. And this is true whether it be sudden or slow; unexpected or long-awaited; gentle or violent.

And if you want corroborative evidence listen to William Hunter, the great anatomist. As he lay dying, he said, 'If I had strength enough to hold a pen, I would write down how easy and pleasant a thing it is to die.'

Yes, an easy, gentle thing; a pleasant, sweet release. There is no death. And yet I do not want to die!

FATHER

SON

Often, father. You

FATHER

I remember when I was a boy away from home at school, it's forty, going on fifty years ago, all the boys coming back to school after the Christmas holidays were singing songs that I never heard before. I remember one of them informing me that he was the 'Monarch of the Sea.' 'What's that?' I asked. 'Pinafore,' he replied. Then another boy, who confided to me that he was called 'Little Buttercup,' when I asked him why, also replied, "That's from Pinafore.' While I was pondering the matter, another announced in a loud treble that he was the 'Captain of the Pinafore'; and the problem was not simplified when someone replied, 'And a right good captain, too.'

I hated to appear ignorant, but I had to know. 'What's the Pinafore?' I inquired. Whereupon they turned from me in disgust, and someone said, 'He's from New Jersey and don't know nothin'; why, the Pinafore is an opera; I saw it four times; it's the most beautiful opera that ever was written - I heard my father tell my mother so.' It appeared that I was the only boy that had not heard Pinafore, and I was much ashamed. My time came to hear it, at Easter, and like my companions, I heard it not once or twice but many times.

• SON

How many times?

FATHER

I haven't the least idea; all told, twenty, perhaps. You can't imagine how this dainty little operetta swept over the land. There was no operatic copyright in those days, or the laws were defective, or something; anyhow, no royalties were paid, and opera companies were formed by the score. Pinafore was played in every city in the country, until finally one's conversation got so cluttered up with bits of it that if a man chanced to say to another, 'I never smoke more than four cigars after dinner,' he met with the rejoinder, 'What, never?' and replied, 'Well, hardly ever'; then they both laughed as if they were great wits and much pleased with themselves. SON

Was Pinafore the first?

FATHER

No, Gilbert had written a number of successful plays, some of which are not quite forgotten; and Sullivan was famous as an organist and a composer of sacred music when he was asked to write the music for an operatic extravaganza, the book of which had been supplied by Gilbert; I have forgotten its name, it makes no difference. It was not a very great success, but it survived the critics, and when it was in due time followed by Pinafore, the world went mad. It was in the spring of 1878, that H. M. S. Pinafore was first produced in England; and it must have been in the following winter that it struck this country with the force of a cyclone.

SON

What does 'H. M. S.' mean?

FATHER

'Her Majesty's Ship Pinafore.' There never was anything like it. No church choir so mean as not to provide a tenor who for a moment sank his differences

Why, my boy, the lives of most of us are hideously commonplace; anything that makes us forget how stupid we are, anything that lifts us up and makes us merry, is useful. Gilbert may be remembered when A. Tennyson and R. Browning are forgotten. Too many people believe that the only stuff that survives is that which gives us furiously to think, as someone has said. Falstaff is a greater creation than Hamlet. And a poet who has his verses set to music is doubly blest: they are assured of a

VOL. 131- - NO. 5

Stand for it! Why, my boy, about ten years ago, maybe it's fifteen, time passes so quickly, they gave a production of Pinafore at the Hippodrome, which for bulk and magnificence surpassed anything ever done in London. I'm not quite sure that a good deal of Gilbert's wit was n't lost in the immensity of the building; but the stage pictures and the choruses were superb. The ship which was the glory of the Queen's Navee looked like a real battleship. It was anchored in real water, and Buttercup was rowed to it in a real rowboat. When Sir Joseph Porter came on board, in all his magnificence, my bosom so heaved with pride that it was all I could do not to 'join up with the Navy and see the world,' as the advertisements tell us to do.

SON

Sir Joseph Porter, he's the great character, is n't he?

FATHER

Well, I should n't say that; he has two capital songs to sing. Let me sing one of 'em for you.

SON

If it's all the same to you, just tell me about it.

FATHER

All right, listen:

When I was a lad, I served a term

As office boy to an attorney's firm.

I cleaned the windows and I swept the floor, And I polished up the handle of the big front door.

I polished up that handle so carefullee
That now I am the Ruler of the Queen's
Navee!

SON

Why, it's Josephus Daniels to the life!

FATHER

Sure it is. We get lots of our ideas about government from comic operas, and then take ourselves as seriously as Sitting Bull. The English, on the other hand, don't hesitate to poke fun at themselves. For centuries Englishmen have been taught to believe that upon the invincibility of their navy Britain's greatness depends; yet when Sir Joseph

Porter, a mere martinet, tells us, in a comic song of many verses, how and by what means he has risen to the control of this great weapon, they positively laugh their heads off. But if anyone in Philadelphia ventures to observe that our streets are unspeakably filthy, our Mayor stops having his photograph taken, and begins talking about what Dr. Johnson said was the last refuge of a scoundrel. It's a case of the shoe pinching I suppose.

SON

I suppose Buttercup

FATHER

I have a theory about Buttercup. I don't think she was originally intended by Gilbert to be attractive. He designed her, I think, to be a fat, disgusting old bumboat woman, a sort of operatic Sarah Gamp, 'who practised baby-farming when she was young and charming,' many years before the story begins. I know that Gilbert refers to her as 'the rosiest, the roundest, and the reddest beauty in all Spithead '; but Gilbert had a pretty taste for paradox, and did n't always say what he meant or

mean what he said. I think the original Buttercup, the girl who created the part, as the saying is, preferred to be young and charming in the present rather than in the past, and got away with it: anyhow, Buttercup has always been a peachy-looking person, the sort of person who at a church fair makes you remember the price when the article is forgotten.

SON

You know the opera by heart?
FATHER

I know the Pinafore from stem to stern, and am on speaking terms with almost every member of her crew. The Pirates of Penzance, the next success, I don't know as well; I have n't heard it for years, but it is from it that we get the music that we sing to our national anthem:

Hail, hail the gang's all here,
What the hell do we care.

It must be magnificent to hear it sung by our statesmen in Washington ('all available male voices without orchestra') just after passing some particularly iniquitous piece of legislation, such as the recent tariff bill.

SON

Why iniquitous?

FATHER

Silly would be a better word. Europe owes us ten billions or so. Say it slowly, and it makes your head swim. It is payable in gold: we have the gold. Europe says, "Take merchandise.' 'No,' we reply, in effect, we want gold,' knowing perfectly well that it is impossible for Europe to send it, and that it would be unwise for us to take it if we could get it.

SON

Don't the Secretary of the Treasury know this?