That always stuck in my mind. It's a pretty wonderful thing, you know. Imagine just being able to die if life didn't seem worth living, or if you were lonely, or maybe just because you wanted to. Oh, I told lots of people about it. You know how sometimes a lull comes in a conversation. Then I'd say, "Pigs are able to just up and die if they want to." But nobody ever paid any attention to me at all. They seemed to ignore the remark. One man did say once, "What the hell are you talking about?" but even he wouldn't listen when I tried to explain. Perhaps it was just too improbable. Besides, people don't like to think about death. They talk about it sometimes and sometimes they brood about it, but they never really think. It has always been too unknown and that frightens them. Then they only fear and stop thinking. It always did seem sad to me that no one had ever tried to help people out about death. Yes, I know one did. He died and came back--but then He wasn't just a man like you or me. And even He never said exactly what it was like. I wondered if anyone really ever _had_ said. So I began to read with only a single purpose in mind. I had to know so I could tell people. If they could only know, then they wouldn't have that fear and we could talk of death and still be able to laugh. But I had read it all when I read of Jacob's dream, for that's all there was--dreams, visions, hopes. No one had ever seen and come back to tell the others. The question then was _why_, not _what_. It couldn't be that all who died had no whole being to return to. Not every death is marked by a body completely uninhabitable. I myself had heard a doctor say, "There is nothing organically wrong now. The patient will recover if only he has the will to live." _The will to live!_ Suddenly I knew I had found the way. I myself would go and see and return to tell them all. * * * * * I answered all the requirements. I had a healthy body to return to. I had the will to live, for I enjoy my reading and acquaintances. And I alone had thought it wonderful that pigs can die when they merely want to. I knew that I could, too, and I was not afraid. Very carefully, I began what seemed almost too simple preparations. Drawing some money from an account I kept for medical expenses (at the time I thought this very amusing), I bought an electric clock which registered the hour and the day of the month on cylinders like those on a tachometer. I felt I would want to know exactly how long I had been deceased when I came back. Next I secured a small round mirror with a concave face, the type some use for shaving. This I was to hang directly above my face. It was merely vanity on my part, for I wished to say that I as well as Lazarus's friends had seen a dead man rise. I had assumed that at first my vision might be blurred and thus the magnifying effect of this particular glass would, I thought, help me focus on my face.