Was I in a condition to stipulate with Death, as I am this moment with
my apothecary, how and where I will take his clyster ----I should
certainly declare against submitting to it before my friends; and
therefore I never seriously think upon the mode and manner of this great
catastrophe, which generally takes up and torments my thoughts as much
as the catastrophe itself; but I constantly draw the curtain across it
with this wish, that the Disposer of all things may so order it, that it
happen not to me in my own house----but rather in some decent inn----at
home, I know it, ----the concern of my friends, and the last services of
wiping my brows, and smoothing my pillow, which the quivering hand of
pale affection shall pay me, will so crucify my soul; that I shall die
of a distemper which my physician is not aware of: but in an inn, the
few cold offices I wanted, would be purchased with a few guineas, and
paid me with an undisturbed, but punctual attention----but mark. This
inn should not be the inn at _Abbeville_----if there was not another inn
in the universe, I would strike that inn out of the capitulation: so
Let the horses be in the chaise exactly by four in the morning ----Yes,
by four, Sir, ----or by _Genevieve!_ I’ll raise a clatter in the house
shall wake the dead.