Excerpt from My Uncle Benjamin Sorrow lurks behind all your pleasures; you are greedy rats whom it attracts with a bit of savory bacon. You are in your shady garden, and cry out, Oh! What a beautiful rose! And the rose pricks you; Oh! What a beautiful pearl there is a wasp on it, and the pear stings you. You say, God has made us to serve and to love him. It is not true. He has made us to suffer. The man who does not suffer is a badly-made machine, a defective creature, a moral cripple, one of nature's abortions. Death is not only the end of life, it is its cure. One is nowhere so well off as in the grave. If you believe me, you will order a coffin instead of a new overcoat. It is, the only garment that does not make you feel uncomfortable. You may take what I have said to you as phil osophy or as paradox; it is all one to me, I assure you. But I pray you at least to accept it as a preface, for I could not make you a better one, or one more suitable to the sad and lamentable story which I am going to have the honour to relate to you. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.