The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton

I have several literary irons in the fire right now. One is The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton.

Here is an excerpt for anyone who has gotten in way over there head, whose options had run out, who feared for an immanent judgment, though hopefully not in a sword duel in a field of wild flowers...

The Colonel said quietly, "Engage!" and the two blades touched and tingled. When the jar of joined iron ran up Syme's arm, all the fantastic fears that have been the subject of this story fell from him like dreams from a man waking up in bed. He remembered them clearly and in order as mere delusions of the nerves - how the fear of the Professor had been the fear of the tyrannic accidents of nightmare, and how the fear of the Doctor had been the fear of the airless vacuum of science. The first was the old fear that any miracle might happen, the second the more hopeless modern fear that no miracle can ever happen. But he saw that these fears were fancies, for he found himself in the presence of the great fact of the fear of death, with its coarse and pitiless common sense. He felt like a man who had dreamed all night of falling over precipices, and had woke up on the morning when he was to be hanged.... He knew his enemy was a terrible fighter, and that probably his last hour had come.

And for anyone who needs to pour an exquisite insult on another, perhaps you can use this sometime...

You great fat, blasted, blear-eyed, blundering, thundering, brainless, Godforsaken, doddering, damned fool! ...You great silly, pink-faced, towheaded turnip!

I had to look up towheaded.