CONDEMNED TO DEATH.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8405, 20 April 1907, Page 3

CONDEMNED TO DEATH.

REMINISCENCES—JUST BEFORE THE END. (By Edward H. Cooper in the London Daily Mail.) Among the more remarkable sensations of existence, perhaps the most interesting during its first moments, 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 alon« 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 :n a hansom, are much the same. I went to sit the other day with a man 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 he talked freely, gratifying me greatly by confirming several theories of mine on this subject. At a certain age—my friend was within a few months of forty, and had therefore reached this age —the average healthy-minded Briton has no very overwhelming terror of death. The "savoir 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, showiitg him more or less the true position of death in Nature's scheme of retribution and suffering. It does not, he perceive 3, hold the worst place. lam afraid that from thetheological point of view my friend's discourse was not all that it should have been. It is a popular and perfectly proper thecry among preachers of all denominations that there can be no more bitter death-bed reflections than those of a man who has spent all 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, little or great—the first of spring flowers, the success of a book which you have loved writing, the first sight of tropical eeas, the soft touch of a little child's hand who comes near to you unasked, and tells you with her yes that she loves you. To others every ache and disappointment of the past lives morbidly on, and is multiplied by ten every year. So the talk now wandered idly to and fro in memory's most glowing sunlight; and fear had no place in it, nor regrets, nor bitterness, nor even much anxiety about the future. Then we began a long\series of questions, each asking ,ir io you remember?" "Have you still got that" programme, menu, race-card? with a dozen other old souvenirs. It was all very unseemly; and the fire burned cheerfully, and tea was brought in, with heaps of muffins and hansoms clacked up and down the road, while the shaded eluctric lights fell on books, on invitation cards, on the •telephone, on old consolatory family portraits of men und women whose hearts too had once loved this gay whirl of life, and are now in a little dust quiescent. Presently, of course, we came,to the oldest tale of all; it had beguh'in his case with disaster, though at long hist, 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 when he talked of the days following a certain winter afternoon when the young person told him—and I, gather, made it very clear indeed —that she did not care for him a rap. He had thought himself quite safe and sure, it appeared, and the shock was rather dreadful, and the world was lost in a mist of horrible pain. But then, again, over the fire, condemned to death, the man told me once more of the sequel to this story, of the "happy ending"; and I, the neophyte, the uninitiated, saw in a great flash of light, for one rather awed moment, the great truth that all death and sorrow, all ambition, honour, success, and delight, are as the idle tears and laughter of a babe compared to the joy which may be when love comes. And it :arne 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 June rosebud unfolds its petals, or a nigl t 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 in unseen, unknown fashion in the soul of a child who had not dreamt of it before; all heaven was opened above this one strange flower as the man stooped to touch it, and the light which touched them both was the light of eternity. The communion had not yet lasted very long, but now it was only death which was coming. Dses it matter much when lovers le in across an open grave, and for an hour or two must say goo:l-bye? Listening wonderingly, respectfully, as an ignorant • outsider should, I gathered that it did not. So, as we talked on, I gathered fresh faitl> in my com i'o rtab loj the or y that the average man, when his hour comes, will have much less to regret than he expects. When I am, too, condemned I will send for tea and muffins and a friend, and tell him how grateful I have been for the two score years of this good world.