allowed any
choice in the matter of the body which they so much desire; they are simply
allotted by chance, and without appeal, to two people whom it is their business
to find and pester until they adopt them. Who these are to be, whether rich or
poor, kind or unkind, healthy or diseased, there is no knowing; they have, in
fact, to entrust themselves for many years to the care of those for whose good
constitution and good sense they have no sort of guarantee.
    It is curious to read the lectures which the wiser heads give to those who
are meditating a change. They talk with them as we talk with a spendthrift, and
with about as much success.
    »To be born,« they say, »is a felony - it is a capital crime, for which
sentence may be executed at any moment after the commission of the offence. You
may perhaps happen to live for some seventy or eighty years, but what is that,
compared with the eternity you now enjoy? And even though the sentence were
commuted, and you were allowed to live on for ever, you would in time become so
terribly weary of life that execution would be the greatest mercy to you.
    Consider the infinite risk; to be born of wicked parents and trained in
vice! to be born of silly parents, and trained to unrealities! of parents who
regard you as a sort of chattel or property, belonging more to them than to
yourself! Again, you may draw utterly unsympathetic parents, who will never be
able to understand you, and who will do their best to thwart you (as a hen when
she has hatched a duckling), and then call you ungrateful because you do not
love them; or, again, you may draw parents who look upon you as a thing to be
cowed while it is still young, lest it should give them trouble hereafter by
having wishes and feelings of its own.
    In later life, when you have been finally allowed to pass muster as a full
member of the world, you will yourself become liable to the pesterings of the
unborn - and a very happy life you may be led in consequence! For we solicit so
strongly that a few only - nor these the best - can refuse us; and yet not to
refuse is much the same as going into partnership with half a dozen different
people about whom one can know absolutely nothing beforehand - not even whether
one is going into partnership with men or women, nor with how many of either.
Delude not your self with thinking that you will be wiser than