It seemed like a damn futile business to keep on living. No more tutors - high school next September which would probably be a devilish bore, since one couldn't be as free and easy as one had been during brief snatches at the neighbourly Slater Avenue school...Oh hell! Why not slough off consciousness altogether?...The whole life of man was a mere cosmic second -so I couldn't be missing much. The method was the only trouble. I didn't like messy exits, and dignified ones were hard to find. Really good poisons were hard to get -those in my chemical laboratory (I reestablished this institution in the basement of the new place) were crude and painful. Bullets were spattery and unreliable. Hanging was ignominious. Daggers were messy unless one could arrange to open a wrist in a bowl of warm water -and even that had its drawbacks despite good Roman precedent. Falls from a cliff were positively vulgar in view of the probable state of the remains. Well what tempted me most was the warm, shallo
