Cleaning the cobwebs- after finishing a memoir of Faulkner by his brother John, I picked up a dusty stack that included a book on bees, John O'Hara (Appointment in Samarra) and Vita Sackville-West.
From "All Passion Spent":
Henry Lyulph Holland, first Earl of Slane, had existed for so long that the public had begun to regard him as immortal. The public, as a whole, finds reassurance in longevity, and, after the necessary interlude of reaction, is disposed to recognize old age as a sign of excellence. The long-liver has triumphed over at least one of man's initial handicaps: the breviity of life. To filch twenty years from eternal annhilation is to impose one's superiority on an allotted programme. So small is the scale upon which we arrange our values. It was thus with a start of real incredulity that City men, opening their papers in the train on a warm May morning, read that Lord Slane, at the age of 94, has passed away suddenly after dinner on the previous evening."
