IT HAPPENS to millions.

They sit in doctors' offices trying to hide nervousness
in the pages of magazines. Wondering what germs their
predecessors have deposited in Life and Harper's Bazaar
or Action Comics.

The nurse calls:

Mr. So-and-so. Mrs. So-and-so. Miss So-and-so.

They go in.

"Doctor," they say, "just lately I've begun to notice . . ."

They have begun to notice Death.

And now the doctor notices, too.

Millions of us, in this century, find out before angina
curls us like insects in flame. Before the stone is lodged in
its screaming cavity. Before the final, involuntary issue of
bowel or bladder or foamy lungs.

It is one of the marvels of science.

" Tom," I said, for the doctor is an old friend,"lately
I've noticed a feeling of fullness in my nasal passages.
And this morning, before I flew down from the country,
I looked at the back of my throat. Up behind the uvula.
Something is-growing there."

"Let's take a squint."

Tom was calm. He hadn't spent his forenoon staring
from an airplane window at the landscapes of New York
and New Jersey, but seeing only a reflection in a bath-

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