JUST BEFORE THE END.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume L, Issue 59, 1 June 1907, Page 3

JUST BEFORE THE END.

Among the more remarkable sensations of existence perhaps the most interesting during its first emotions, while the shock is fairly fresh, is that of being condemned to death.

It makes little difference whether the condemnation is pronounced emphatically, even rudely, by a judge in a black cap, while you stand alone behind a little railing, or very kindly, in a great physician's consulting room, with a friend's hand on yours; the emotions a moment or two afterwards, whether in a prison cell or driving home in a hansom, are much the same. 1 went to sit the other day with a mail on whom one of these judges—l forget which, and, really, as I say, it does not matter—had just pronounced his condemnation. We were good friends, and lie talked freely, gratifying me greatly by confirming several theories of mine on the subject.

At a certain age—my friend was within a few months of forty, and bad therefore reached this agi—the average lienlthy-iiiiiiiled Briton has no very overwhelming terror of death. The "savqir vivre" of the educated man of the world includes knowing how to die.

He has discovered that death is not only inevitable for other people, but must also come to himself: and he has gained a certain sense of proportion, showing him more or less the true position of death in Nature's scheme of retribution and suffering. It does not. he perceives, hold the worst place. I am afraid that from a theological point of view my friend's discourse was not all that it should have been. It is a popular and perfectly proper theory among preachers of all denomination-! that there can be no more bitter deathbed reflections than those of a man win has spent all his life trying to enjoy himself. My friend seemed merely to take an unholy pleasure, in the fact that he had succeeded in enjoying himself. To some minds, you see, all past pain is a blur, and only pleasure lives on—every pleasure, Utile or great—the first vision of spring (lowers, the success of a book which you have loved writing, the first sight of tropical seas, the soft touch of a little child's band who comes near to you unasked, and tels you with her eyes that she loves you. To others

every ache ami disappointment of the past lives morbidly on, ami is multiplied by leu every year. So the talk Dow wandered idly to and fro in memory's most glowing sunlight; and fear bad no plate, in it, no regrets, nor bitterness, nov even much anxiety about the future. Then we began a long series of questions, asking, "Do you remember?'' "Have you still got that'' programme, menu, race-card'/ with a dozen other souvenirs, it was all very im-

semly; and the fire burned cheerfully, and tea was brought in, with heaps of nmlfins; and hansoms clacked up and down the road; while the shaded electric lights fell on books., on invitation cards, on the telephone, on old consolatory family portraits of men and women whose hearts too had loved this gay whirl of life, and are now in a little dust quies-

oldest tale of »1I; it had begun in ,Ins case with disaster, though at long last as such tales sometimes will, it had ended happily. The man's voice became a strained murmur, his hands went to his face even now in tremulous pain, where he talked of the days following a certain winter afternoon when the young person told him—and. I gather, made it very plain indeed—that she did not care for him a rap. He had thought himself quite safe and sure, it appeared, and the shock was quite dreadful, and the world was last u a mist of horrible pain. lint then, again, over the lire, condemned to death, the man told me once more of (lie sequel to this story, of the "happy finding'': and 1, the neophyte, thi! uniti.ited. saw in a great Hush of great truth I hut all death and sorrow, light for one rather awed moment, the all ambition, honor, success, and delight, are as the idle tears and laughf":' of a babe compared to the joy which may be when love conies. And it came to him at last; Heaven was merciful at last; some all-seeing omnipotent pity looked down in the end on this torture which had stretched just a little beyond what mortal nerve could endure. Ido not quite know what happened. Who can tell when and why a snowdrop suddenly shines out white amid the dark winter greenery, or a night cloud drifts away to let a cluster of stars gleam out radiant, far off. pin-points of the inconceivable light of Heaven? Only . . . one spring morning the verdict of the winter afternoon, for some reason or other, was reversed; love had grown up suddenly ill unseen, unknown fashion in the soul of a child who had not dreamt of it before; all heaven was opened above this new strange flower as the man stooped to touch it., and the light which touched them both was the light of eternity. The communion hud not yet lasted very long, but now it was only death that was couiiug. Does it matter much when lovers lean across an open grave and for an hour or two must say good-bye? Listening wonderingly. respectfully, as an ignorant outsider should. I gathered that it did not. So. as we talked on, I gathered fresh faith in my comfortable theory that the average man, when this hour pomes? will have much less to regret that he expects. "When lam too condemned T will send for tea and muffins, and a friend, and tell him how grateful I have been for two score years of this good world.— lid ward 11. Cooper, in the Daily Mail.