afraid of ourselves and of each other; of life
which is hard, and of death which is terrible;
of the world which overpowers us, and of the
isolation which starves; of the work which will
kill us, and of the idleness by which we cannot
live; of every phase of social life, in one or
other of its aspects. Governments, too, are all
afraid of each other while they play at chess
with politics, using their armies for the ultima
ratio, the "fork" into which each endeavours
to get his adversary, with the sorry alternative
of quiet submission to pre-ordained loss, or
defeat by a costlier onslaught: war being now
calculated at so much a ball, with a margin for
windage and spent bullets. And kings and
peoples are afraid of each other almost
everywhere save in England, and watch each other
like wild cats mewed up in bamboo cages, with
a very slight railwork between them, ready at
the least incautious movement, or only so much
aggression as the twitch of a whisker or the
faltering of a paw, to tear down the railwork
and fasten on each other.

Wide is the range of the things we fear in
our corporate life; wide indeed, as that life
itself. In summer we Londoners are afraid of
cholera, the miasma of the Thames, and the
mephitic vapours of our gas-pipes and sewers;
and all the year round are we afraid of the
rates and taxes consequent. In autumn the
country folk are afraid of the potato disease,
of the turnip fly, of light ears in the corn-fields,
and of scant straw in the farm-yard. In winter
some among us fear the frost which will kill off
the poor and the aged, the infants and the sickly;
and others fear an open season, which will breed
typhus in the close alleys, and will not kill the
grubs and noxious insects; and in spring we
are afraid of the east wind or the south, according
as we dread catarrh in ourselves or the rot
in our farms and gardens. We are afraid of
too much ozone in the atmosphere, and we are
afraid of too little—we ignoramuses, I mean;
for of course the chemists know their business
and understand meters. We are afraid of
apoplexy or of influenza, of sunstroke or of
bronchitis, according to the climate in which we
abide; but we are sure to be afraid of one or
the other. Liebig, more power to his name! is
afraid that we wasteful English, dealing with
substances in the high-handed, stiff-necked,
blind-eyed prodigality natural to us, will denude
the world of its manure stores, and so deprive
the future of its food; and the Malthusians are
afraid that the world will get overstocked with
human animals, and that the crying generations
yet unborn will have to go supperless to bed,
because there will be more mouths than meat.
There are some who talk learned fear about a
second deluge from the tilting of the earth on
its axis, and the consequent streaming over of
the waters in the Polar basin—I forget now
which, whether north or south; there are others
who quake at a possible collision with a comet,
when old mother earth will have the breath
knocked out of her body, and will lie, collapsed
and lifeless, like a log in space. Some live
in a vague alarm of the subterranean fire and
the stopping up of volcanic vent-holes, when
we shall have such an explosion as will send us
spinning—who knows where?—perhaps as far
as Jupiter, or, it may be, to be brought, up by
Saturn's belts; others make long faces at the
thickening of the earth's crust and the cooling
of those same fires, and foresee the time when
we shall be all snow men, living on a huge
ice-ball. Some look for the Millennium, for
which they are not prepared; and some for the
Last Day, for which they are less prepared.
Some, fear that our coal-beds will fail, and that
we shall have chilblains and frosted toes for
want of fuel; others, that gold will become
as common as copper, and then what shall we
do for our currency? Indeed, a few amiable
alarmists, willing to make the best of a bad job,
have already settled that matter, and have given
platinum the palm over all other metals handy for
small change; which at least is the sensible side
of fear—the preparation of a substitute when the
loss we dread shall have really come upon us.

Some live in a daily death by fire. To hear
this sort one would think that awful conflagrations
were as common as April showers, and
cremation the natural end of man. Indeed, the
miracle of existence seems to be how we all
escape being burned in our beds nightly. I
have noticed this as a country superstition
respecting London and the Londoners; and how
anxious timid ladies are about the trap-doors
and the fire-escape—which they would be sure
to forget if a fire did occur—and how sometimes
they will not mount even to the first floor, so
terrified are they of being roasted alive before
they know what they are about. Some think
that fire is locomotive and intelligently spiteful,
and that a candle, a yard or so from a curtain,
can set it alight without aid of wind or
movement; or that a tiny flame peering up the
register to look into the darkness above, will
run through the soot in a blaze, and bring the
parish engine at a gallop to the rescue. I once
knew a lady who was a living martyr to this
fear of fire, and whose existence was rendered
miserable because of coals and candles. A flask
of petroleum nearly killed her outright; and, as
it was, caused her a serious illness. It was
about the time of the great petroleum burning
on the river when the Thames was really set
on fire with blazing oil, and up to which time
she had used a petroleum oil lamp with happy
confidence and in still happier ignorance. The
flask was hung on a nail in the coal-cellar, as
safe and as dirty as things in coal-cellars usually
are; but my poor friend declared that the nail
would give way, that the flask would fall, that
the oil would be spilt among the coals, and that
the next time Mary came to mend the fire, there
would be an explosion to which gunpowder
would be nothing, and gun-cotton mere child's
play. Of course the house in which she lived
would be burned to the ground, and not only
that one but the whole terrace, with a heca-tomb
of human lives accompanying. There was
no reasoning with her. I believe the petroleum
was buried in the garden by her maid, in a vain
attempt to pacify her.