Happily no one can ever certainly know this, though
many try to make themselves miserable by endeavouring to find it out. It
seems as though there were some power somewhere which mercifully stays us
from putting that sting into the tail of death, which we would put there
if we could, and which ensures that though death must always be a
bugbear, it shall never under any conceivable circumstances be more than
a bugbear.
For even though a man is condemned to die in a week's time and is shut up
in a prison from which it is certain that he cannot escape, he will
always hope that a reprieve may come before the week is over. Besides,
the prison may catch fire, and he may be suffocated not with a rope, but
with common ordinary smoke; or he may be struck dead by lightning while
exercising in the prison yards. When the morning is come on which the
poor wretch is to be hanged, he may choke at his breakfast, or die from
failure of the heart's action before the drop has fallen; and even though
it has fallen, he cannot be quite certain that he is going to die, for he
cannot know this till his death has actually taken place, and it will be
too late then for him to discover that he was going to die at the
appointed hour after all.
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