Is Life Worth Living?

When Mr. Mallock's book with this title appeared some fifteen years ago, the jocose answer that "it depends on the _liver_" had great currency in the newspapers. The answer which I propose to give to-night cannot be jocose. In the words of one of Shakespeare's prologues,—

"I come no more to make you laugh; things now, That bear a weighty and a serious brow, Sad, high, and working, full of state and woe,"—