a library in his country house

"I'm haunted by the fate of my friend Dave, who finally, after a long lifetime on an academic salary, could afford at seventy to build a library in his country house—the house itself only acquired in his mid-sixties. A month after the architect's plan was approved and the contractor broke ground, Dave was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He was too weak to go up and see the walls rising from the muddy ground, the built-in shelves, the balcony overlooking the verdant fields. By the time it was finished, he was dead."

~~ from My Life in the Middle Ages by James Atlas