["No man is more fragile than another: no man more certain than another of to-morrow."--Seneca, Ep., 91.] For anything I have to do before I die, the longest leisure would appear too short, were it but an hour's business I had to do. A friend of mine the other day turning over my tablets, found therein a memorandum of something I would have done after my decease, whereupon I told him, as it was really true, that though I was no more than a league's distance only from my own house, and merry and well, yet when that thing came into my head, I made haste to write it down there, because I was not certain to live till I came home. As a man that am eternally brooding over my own thoughts, and confine them to my own particular concerns, I am at all hours as well prepared as I am ever like to be, and death, whenever he shall come, can bring nothing along with him I did not expect long before. We should always, as near as we can, be booted and spurred, and ready to go, and, above all things, take care, at that time, to have no business with any one but one's self:-- "Quid brevi fortes jaculamur avo Multa?" ["Why for so short a life tease ourselves with so many projects?" --Hor., Od., ii. 16, 17.] for we shall there find work enough to do, without any need of addition. One man complains, more than of death, that he is thereby prevented of a glorious victory; another, that he must die before he has married his daughter, or educated his children; a third seems only troubled that he must lose the society of his wife; a fourth, the conversation of his son, as the principal comfort and concern of his being. For my part, I am, thanks be to God, at this instant in such a condition, that I am ready to dislodge, whenever it shall please Him, without regret for anything whatsoever. I disengage myself throughout from all worldly relations; my leave is soon taken of all but myself. Never did any one prepare to bid adieu to the world more absolutely and unreservedly, and to shake hands with all manner of interest in it, than I expect to do. The deadest deaths are the best: "'Miser, O miser,' aiunt, 'omnia ademit Una dies infesta mihi tot praemia vitae.'" ["'Wretch that I am,' they cry, 'one fatal day has deprived me of all joys of life.'"--Lucretius, iii. 911.] And the builder, "Manuet," says he, "opera interrupta, minaeque Murorum ingentes." ["The works remain incomplete, the tall pinnacles of the walls unmade."--AEneid, iv. 88.] A man must design nothing that will require so much time to the finishing, or, at least, with no such passionate desire to see it brought to perfection. We are born to action: "Quum moriar, medium solvar et inter opus." ["When I shall die, let it be doing that I had designed." --Ovid, Amor., ii. 10, 36.]