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as they always were,
and today, for some reason, I can see them more clearly than
ever. The path around the lake in the gardens of Worcester
College, where Lovelace used to walk. The gateway at
Pembroke. The view westward over the town from Magdalen
Tower. The great hall at Christchurch. The little rockery at
St John’s where I have counted more than a dozen varieties of
campanula, including the rare and dainty C. Waldsteiniana.
But there, you see! I haven’t even begun and already I’m falling

into the trap. So let me get started now; and let you read
it slowly, my dear, without any of that sense of sorrow or
disapproval that might otherwise embarrass your understanding.
Promise me now that you will read it slowly, and that
you will put yourself in a cool and patient frame of mind
before you begin.
      
The details of the illness that struck me down so suddenly
in my middle life are known to you. I need not waste time
upon them—except to admit at once how foolish I was not to
have gone earlier to my doctor. Cancer is one of the few
remaining diseases that these modern drugs cannot cure. A
surgeon can operate if it has not spread too far; but with me,
not only did I leave it too late, but the thing had the effrontery
to attack me in the pancreas, making both surgery and survival
equally impossible.
      
So here I was with somewhere between one and six months
left to live, growing more melancholy every hour—and then,
all of a sudden, in comes Landy.
      
That was six weeks ago, on a Tuesday morning, very early,
long before your visiting time, and the moment he entered I
knew there was some sort of madness in the wind. He didn’t
creep in on his toes, sheepish and embarrassed, not knowing
what to say, like all my other visitors. He came in strong and
smiling, and he strode up to the bed and stood there looking
down at me with a wild bright glimmer in his eyes, and he
said, “William, my boy, this is perfect. You’re just the one I
want!”
      
Perhaps I should explain to you here that although John
Landy has never been to our house, and you have seldom if
ever met him, I myself have been friendly with him for at
least nine years. I am, of course, primarily a teacher of
philosophy, but as you know I’ve lately been dabbling a good
deal in psychology as well. Landy’s interests and mine have
therefore slightly overlapped. He is a magnificent neuro-surgeon,
one of the finest, and recently he has been kind

enough to let me study the results of some of his work,
especially the varying effects of prefrontal lobotomies upon
different types of psychopath. So you can see that when he
suddenly burst in on me Tuesday morning, we were by no
means strangers to one another.
      
“Look,” he said, pulling up a chair beside the bed. “In a few
weeks you’re going to be dead. Correct?”
      
Coming from Landy, the question didn’t seem especially
unkind. In a way it was refreshing to have a visitor brave
enough to touch upon the forbidden subject.
      
“You’re going to expire right here in this room, and then
they’ll take you out and cremate you.”
      
“Bury me,” I said.
      
“That’s even worse. And then what? Do you believe you’ll
go to heaven?”
      
“I doubt it,” I said, “though it would be comforting to think
so.”
      
“Or hell, perhaps?”
      
“I don’t really see why they should send me there.”
      
“You never know, my dear William.”
      
“What’s all this about?” I asked.
      
“Well,” he said, and I could see him watching me carefully,
“personally, I don’t believe that after you’re dead you’ll ever
hear of yourself again—unless . . .” and here he paused and
smiled and leaned closer “. . . unless, of course, you have the
sense to put yourself into my hands. Would you care to consider
a proposition?”
      
The way he was staring