Explore "A Watcher by the Dead" by Ambrose Bierce on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
In a physician's office in Kearny Street three men sat about a table, drinking punch and smoking. It was late in the evening, almost midnight, indeed, and there had been no lack of punch. The gravest of the three, Dr. Helberson, was the host -- it was in his rooms they sat. He was about thirty years of age; the others were even younger; all were physicians.
"The superstitious awe with which the living regard the dead," said Dr. Helberson, "is hereditary and incurable. One needs no more be ashamed of it than of the fact that he inherits, for example, an incapacity for mathematics, or a tendency to lie."