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 MS T R I P LEX 
 
 iOBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 
 
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MS TRIPLEX 
 
iES 
 TRIPLEX 
 
 BY 
 Robert Louis Stevenson 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 Charles Scribner's Sons 
 
 1901 
 
 I Post Office Tm j , 
 
 NOV 6 1903 
 LIBRARY 
 
 <Q^ 
 
 • 
 
 

 By Transfer 
 
 P.O. Dept. 
 
 Mar 23 06 
 
 D. B. Updike, The Merrymount Press, Boston 
 
NOV 6 1903 
 LIBRARY. 
 
 MS TRIPLEX 
 
 JL HE changes wrought by death 
 are in themselves so sharp and final, 
 and so terrible and melancholy in 
 their consequences, that the thing 
 stands alone in man's experience, and 
 has no parallel upon earth. It out- 
 does all other accidents because it is 
 the last of them. Sometimes it leaps 
 suddenly upon its victims, like a 
 Thug; sometimes it lays a regular 
 siege and creeps upon their citadel 
 during a score of years. And when 
 the business is done, there is sore 
 havoc made in other people's lives, 
 and a pin knocked out by which 
 many subsidiary friendships hung to- 
 gether. There are empty chairs, soli- 
 tary walks, and single beds at night. 
 
JES TRIPLEX 
 
 Again, in taking away our friends, 
 death does not take them away ut- 
 terly, but leaves behind a mocking, 
 tragical, and soon intolerable residue, 
 which must be hurriedly concealed. 
 Hence a whole chapter of sights and 
 customs striking to the mind, from 
 the pyramids of Egypt to the gib- 
 bets and dule trees of mediaeval Eu- 
 rope. The poorest persons have a bit 
 of pageant going towards the tomb; 
 memorial stones are set up over the 
 least memorable; and, in order to 
 preserve some show of respect for 
 what remains of our old loves and 
 friendships, we must accompany it 
 with much grimly ludicrous cere- 
 monial, and the hired undertaker 
 parades before the door. All this, and 
 much more of the same sort, accom- 
 panied by the eloquence of poets, has 
 
 2 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 gone a great way to put humanity in 
 error; nay, in many philosophies the 
 error has been embodied and laid 
 down with every circumstance of 
 logic; although in real life the bustle 
 and swiftness, in leaving people little 
 time to think, have not left them 
 time enough to go dangerously 
 wrong in practice. 
 
 As a matter of fact, although few 
 things are spoken of with more fear- 
 ful whisperings than this prospect of 
 death, few have less influence on 
 conduct under healthy circumstances. 
 We have all heard of cities in South 
 America built upon the side of fiery 
 mountains, and how, even in this 
 tremendous neighbourhood, the in- 
 habitants are not a jot more im- 
 pressed by the solemnity of mortal 
 conditions than if they were delving 
 
JES TRIPLEX 
 
 gardens in the greenest corner of 
 England. There are serenades and 
 suppers and much gallantry among 
 the myrtles overhead; and mean- 
 while the foundation shudders under- 
 foot, the bowels of the mountain 
 growl, and at any moment living 
 ruin may leap sky-high into the 
 moonlight, and tumble man and his 
 merry-making in the dust. In the 
 eyes of very young people, and very 
 dull old ones, there is something in- 
 describably reckless and desperate in 
 such a picture. It seems not credible 
 that respectable married people, with 
 umbrellas, should find appetite for a 
 bit of supper within quite a long dis- 
 tance of a fiery mountain; ordinary 
 life begins to smell of high-handed 
 debauch when it is carried on so 
 close to a catastrophe; and even 
 
 4 
 
JES TRIPLEX 
 
 cheese and salad, it seems, could 
 hardly be relished in such circum- 
 stances without something like a de- 
 fiance of the Creator. It should be a 
 place for nobody but hermits dwell- 
 ing in prayer and maceration or mere 
 born-devils drowning care in a per- 
 petual carouse. 
 
 And yet, when one comes to think 
 upon it calmly, the situation of these 
 South American citizens forms only 
 a very pale figure for the state of 
 ordinary mankind. This world itself, 
 travelling blindly and swiftly in over- 
 crowded space, among a million 
 other worlds travelling blindly and 
 swiftly in contrary directions, may 
 very well come by a knock that 
 would set it into explosion like a 
 penny squib. And what, pathologi- 
 cally looked at, is the human body 
 
 5 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 with all its organs, but a mere bagful 
 of petards? The least of these is as 
 dangerous to the whole economy as 
 the ship's powder-magazine to the 
 ship; and with every breath we 
 breathe, and every meal we eat, we 
 are putting one or more of them in 
 peril. If we clung as devotedly as 
 some philosophers pretend we do to 
 the abstract idea of life, or were half 
 as frightened as they make out we 
 are, for the subversive accident that 
 ends it all, the trumpets might sound 
 by the hour and no one would follow 
 them into battle — the blue-peter 
 might fly at the truck, but who 
 would climb into a sea-going ship? 
 Think (if these philosophers were 
 right) with what a preparation of 
 spirit we should affront the daily 
 peril of the dinner-table: a deadlier 
 6 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 spot than any battle-field in history, 
 where the far greater proportion of 
 our ancestors have miserably left 
 their bones! What woman would 
 ever be lured into marriage, so much 
 more dangerous than the wildest sea? 
 And what would it be to grow old? 
 For, after a certain distance, every 
 step we take in life we find the ice 
 growing thinner below our feet, and 
 all around us and behind us we see 
 our contemporaries going through. 
 By the time a man gets well into the 
 seventies, his continued existence is a 
 mere miracle; and when he lays his 
 old bones in bed for the night, there 
 is an overwhelming probability that 
 he will never see the day. Do the old 
 men mind it, as a matter of fact? 
 Why, no. They were never merrier; 
 they have their grog at night, and 
 7 
 
JES TRIPLEX 
 
 tell the raciest stories; they hear of 
 the death of people about their own 
 age, or even younger, not as if it was 
 a grisly warning, but with a simple 
 childlike pleasure at having outlived 
 some one else; and when a draught 
 might puff them out like a guttering 
 candle, or a bit of a stumble shatter 
 them like so much glass, their old 
 hearts keep sound and unaffrighted, 
 and they go on, bubbling with laugh- 
 ter, through years of man's age com- 
 pared to which the valley at Bala- 
 clava was as safe and peaceful as a 
 village cricket-green on Sunday. It 
 may fairly be questioned (if we look 
 to the peril only) whether it was a 
 much more daring feat for Curtius to 
 plunge into the gulf, than for any 
 old gentleman of ninety to doff his 
 clothes and clamber into bed. 
 
 8 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 Indeed, it is a memorable subject 
 for consideration, with what uncon- 
 cern and gaiety mankind pricks on 
 along the Valley of the Shadow of 
 Death. The whole way is one wil- 
 derness of snares, and the end of it, 
 for those who fear the last pinch, is 
 irrevocable ruin. And yet we go spin- 
 ning through it all, like a party for 
 the Derby. Perhaps the reader re- 
 members one of the humorous de- 
 vices of the deified Caligula : how he 
 encouraged a vast concourse of holi- 
 day-makers on to his bridge over 
 Baiae bay; and when they were in 
 the height of their enjoyment, turned 
 loose the Praetorian guards among 
 the company, and had them tossed 
 into the sea. This is no bad minia- 
 ture of the dealings of nature with 
 the transitory race of man. Only, 
 9 
 
.ES TRIPLEX 
 
 what a chequered picnic we have 
 of it, even while it lasts! and into 
 what great waters, not to be crossed 
 by any swimmer, God's pale Praeto- 
 rian throws us over in the end! 
 
 We live the time that a match 
 flickers; we pop the cork of a gin- 
 ger-beer bottle, and the earthquake 
 swallows us on the instant. Is it 
 not odd, is it not incongruous, is it 
 not, in the highest sense of human 
 speech, incredible, that we should 
 think so highly of the ginger-beer, 
 and regard so little the devouring 
 earthquake? The love of Life and 
 the fear of Death are two famous 
 phrases that grow harder to under- 
 stand the more we think about 
 them. It is a well-known fact that 
 an immense proportion of boat acci- 
 dents would never happen if people 
 10 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 held the sheet in their hands instead 
 of making it fast; and yet, unless it 
 be some martinet of a professional 
 mariner or some landsman with shat- 
 tered nerves, every one of God's 
 creatures makes it fast. A strange 
 instance of man's unconcern and 
 brazen boldness in the face of death ! 
 We confound ourselves with meta- 
 physical phrases, which we import 
 into daily talk with noble inappro- 
 priateness. We have no idea of what 
 death is, apart from its circumstances 
 and some of its consequences to 
 others; and although we have some 
 experience of living, there is not a 
 man on earth who has flown so high 
 into abstraction as to have any prac- 
 tical guess at the meaning of the 
 word life. All literature, from Job 
 and Omar Khayyam to Thomas Car- 
 11 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 lyle or Walt Whitman, is but an 
 attempt to look upon the human 
 state with such largeness of view as 
 shall enable us to rise from the con- 
 sideration of living to the Definition 
 of Life. And our sages give us about 
 the best satisfaction in their power 
 when they say that it is a vapour, 
 or a show, or made out of the same 
 stuff with dreams. Philosophy, in its 
 more rigid sense, has been at the 
 same work for ages; and after a 
 myriad bald heads have wagged 
 over the problem, and piles of words 
 have been heaped one upon another 
 into dry and cloudy volumes without 
 end, philosophy has the honour of 
 laying before us, with modest pride, 
 her contribution towards the subject: 
 that life is a Permanent Possibility 
 of Sensation. Truly a fine result! A 
 12 
 
JES TRIPLEX 
 
 man may very well love beef, or 
 hunting, or a woman; but surely, 
 surely, not a Permanent Possibility 
 of Sensation! He may be afraid of 
 a precipice, or a dentist, or a large 
 enemy with a club, or even an un- 
 dertaker's man; but not certainly of 
 abstract death. We may trick with 
 the word life in its dozen senses until 
 we are weary of tricking ; we may 
 argue in terms of all the philosophies 
 on earth, but one fact remains true 
 throughout — that we do not love 
 life, in the sense that we are greatly 
 preoccupied about its conservation; 
 that we do not, properly speaking, 
 love life at all, but living. Into the 
 views of the least careful there will 
 enter some degree of providence ; no 
 man's eyes are fixed entirely on the 
 passing hour; but although we have 
 
 13 
 
JES TRIPLEX 
 
 some anticipation of good health, 
 good weather, wine, active employ- 
 ment, love, and self-approval, the 
 sum of these anticipations does not 
 amount to anything like a general 
 view of life's possibilities and issues; 
 nor are those who cherish them most 
 vividly, at all the most scrupulous of 
 their personal safety. To be deeply 
 interested in the accidents of our 
 existence, to enjoy keenly the mixed 
 texture of human experience, rather 
 leads a man to disregard precautions, 
 and risk his neck against a straw. For 
 surely the love of living is stronger 
 in an Alpine climber roping over a 
 peril, or a hunter riding merrily at 
 a stiff fence, than in a creature who 
 lives upon a diet and walks a meas- 
 ured distance in the interest of his 
 constitution. 
 
 14 
 
JES TRIPLEX 
 
 There is a great deal of very vile 
 nonsense talked upon both sides of 
 the matter: tearing divines reducing 
 life to the dimensions of a mere 
 funeral procession, so short as to be 
 hardly decent; and melancholy unbe- 
 lievers yearning for the tomb as if 
 it were a world too far away. Both 
 sides must feel a little ashamed of 
 their performances now and again 
 when they draw in their chairs to 
 dinner. Indeed, a good meal and 
 a bottle of wine is an answer to 
 most standard works upon the ques- 
 tion. When a man's heart warms 
 to his viands, he forgets a great deal 
 of sophistry, and soars into a rosy 
 zone of contemplation. Death may 
 be knocking at the door, like the 
 Commander's statue; we have some- 
 thing else in hand, thank God, and 
 
 15 
 
JES TRIPLEX 
 
 let him knock. Passing bells are 
 ringing all the world over. All the 
 world over, and every hour, some 
 one is parting company with all his 
 aches and ecstasies. For us also 
 the trap is laid. But we are so fond 
 of life that we have no leisure to 
 entertain the terror of death. It is 
 a honeymoon with us all through, 
 and none of the longest. Small 
 blame to us if we give our whole 
 hearts to this glowing bride of ours, 
 to the appetites, to honour, to the 
 hungry curiosity of the mind, to the 
 pleasure of the eyes in nature, and 
 the pride of our own nimble bodies. 
 We all of us appreciate the sen- 
 sations; but as for caring about the 
 Permanence of the Possibility, a 
 man's head is generally very bald, 
 and his senses very dull, before he 
 16 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 comes to that. Whether we regard 
 life as a lane leading to a dead wall 
 — a mere bag's end, as the French 
 say — or whether we think of it as 
 a vestibule or gymnasium, where 
 we wait our turn and prepare our 
 faculties for some more noble des- 
 tiny ; whether we thunder in a pulpit, 
 or pule in little atheistic poetry- 
 books, about its vanity and brevity; 
 whether we look justly for years of 
 health and vigour, or are about to 
 mount into a bath-chair, as a step 
 towards the hearse; in each and all 
 of these views and situations there 
 is but one conclusion possible: that 
 a man should stop his ears against 
 paralysing terror, and run the race 
 that is set before him with a single 
 mind. No one surely could have 
 recoiled with more heartache and 
 17 
 
jES triplex 
 
 terror from the thought of death 
 than our respected lexicographer; 
 and yet we know how little it af- 
 fected his conduct, how wisely and 
 boldly he walked, and in what a 
 fresh and lively vein he spoke of 
 life. Already an old man, he ven- 
 tured on his Highland tour; and his 
 heart, bound with triple brass, did 
 not recoil before twenty-seven indi- 
 vidual cups of tea. As courage and 
 intelligence are the two qualities 
 best worth a good man's cultivation, 
 so it is the first part of intelligence 
 to recognize our precarious estate in 
 life, and the first part of courage to 
 be not at all abashed before the fact. 
 A frank and somewhat headlong 
 carriage, not looking too anxiously 
 before, not dallying in maudlin re- 
 gret over the past, stamps the man 
 
 18 
 
MS triplex 
 
 who is well armoured for this world. 
 And not only well armoured for 
 himself, but a good friend and a 
 good citizen to boot. We do not 
 go to cowards for tender dealing; 
 there is nothing so cruel as panic; 
 the man who has least fear for his 
 own carcass has most time to con- 
 sider others. That eminent chemist 
 who took his walks abroad in tin 
 shoes, and subsisted wholly upon 
 tepid milk, had all his work cut out 
 for him in considerate dealings with 
 his own digestion. So soon as pru- 
 dence has begun to grow up in the 
 brain, like a dismal fungus, it finds 
 its first expression in a paralysis of 
 generous acts. The victim begins 
 to shrink spiritually; he develops a 
 fancy for parlours with a regulated 
 temperature, and takes his morality 
 19 
 
JES TRIPLEX 
 
 on the principle of tin shoes and 
 tepid milk. The care of one impor- 
 tant body or soul becomes so en- 
 grossing, that all the noises of the 
 outer world begin to come thin and 
 faint into the parlour with the regu- 
 lated temperature; and the tin shoes 
 go equably forward over blood and 
 rain. To be overwise is to ossify; 
 and the scruple-monger ends by 
 standing stockstill. Now the man 
 who has his heart on his sleeve, and 
 a good whirling weathercock of a 
 brain, who reckons his life as a 
 thing to be dashingly used and 
 cheerfully hazarded, makes a very 
 different acquaintance of the world, 
 keeps all his pulses going true and 
 fast, and gathers impetus as he runs, 
 until, if he be running towards any- 
 thing better than wildfire, he may 
 
 20 
 
JES TRIPLEX 
 
 shoot up and become a constellation 
 in the end. Lord look after his 
 health, Lord have a care of his soul, 
 says he; and he has at the key of 
 the position, and swashes through 
 incongruity and peril towards his 
 aim. Death is on all sides of him 
 with pointed batteries, as he is on 
 all sides of all of us; unfortunate 
 surprises gird him round; mim- 
 mouthed friends and relations hold 
 up their hands in quite a little ele- 
 giacal synod about his path: and 
 what cares he for all this? Being a 
 true lover of living, a fellow with 
 something pushing and spontaneous 
 in his inside, he must, like any other 
 soldier, in any other stirring, deadly 
 warfare, push on at his best pace 
 until he touch the goal. "A peerage 
 or Westminster Abbey!" cried Nel- 
 
 21 
 
JES TRIPLEX 
 
 son in his bright, boyish, heroic man- 
 ner. These are great incentives; not 
 for any of these, but for the plain 
 satisfaction of living, of being about 
 their business in some sort or other, 
 do the brave, serviceable men of 
 every nation tread down the nettle 
 danger, and pass flyingly over all 
 the stumbling-blocks of prudence. 
 Think of the heroism of Johnson, 
 think of that superb indifference 
 to mortal limitation that set him 
 upon his dictionary, and carried him 
 through triumphantly until the end! 
 Who, if he were wisely considerate 
 of things at large, would ever em- 
 bark upon any work much more 
 considerable than a halfpenny post 
 card? Who would project a serial 
 novel, after Thackeray and Dickens 
 had each fallen in mid-course? Who 
 22 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 would find heart enough to begin 
 to live, if he dallied with the con- 
 sideration of death ? 
 
 And, after all, what sorry and piti- 
 ful quibbling all this is ! To forego all 
 the issues of living in a parlour with 
 a regulated temperature — as if that 
 were not to die a hundred times 
 over, and for ten years at a stretch! 
 As if it were not to die in one's 
 own lifetime, and without even the 
 sad immunities of death! As if it 
 were not to die, and yet be the pa- 
 tient spectators of our own pitiable 
 change! The Permanent Possibility 
 is preserved, but the sensations care- 
 fully held at arm's length, as if one 
 kept a photographic plate in a dark 
 chamber. It is better to lose health 
 like a spendthrift than to waste it 
 like a miser. It is better to live and 
 
 23 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 be done with it, than to die daily in 
 the sickroom. By all means begin 
 your folio; even if the doctor does 
 not give you a year, even if he hesi- 
 tates about a month, make one brave 
 push and see what can be accom- 
 plished in a week. It is not only in 
 finished undertakings that we ought 
 to honour useful labour. A spirit 
 goes out of the man who means 
 execution, which outlives the most 
 untimely ending. All who have 
 meant good work with their whole 
 hearts, have done good work, al- 
 though they may die before they 
 have the time to sign it. Every heart 
 that has beat strong and cheerfully 
 has left a hopeful impulse behind it 
 in the world, and bettered the tradi- 
 tion of mankind. And even if death 
 catch people, like an open pitfall, 
 
 24 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 and in mid-career, laying out vast 
 projects, and planning monstrous 
 foundations, flushed with hope, and 
 their mouths full of boastful lan- 
 guage, they should be at once 
 tripped up and silenced: is there 
 not something brave and spirited in 
 such a termination? and does not 
 life go down with a better grace, 
 foaming in full body over a preci- 
 pice, than miserably straggling to 
 an end in sandy deltas? When the 
 Greeks made their fine saying that 
 those whom the gods love die young, 
 I cannot help believing they had 
 this sort of death also in their eye. 
 For surely, at whatever age it over- 
 take the man, this is to die young. 
 Death has not been suffered to take 
 so much as an illusion from his 
 heart. In the hot-fit of life, a-tiptoe 
 
 25 
 
MS TRIPLEX 
 
 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 spir- 
 itual land. 
 
 THE END 
 
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 
 
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