Dying Aphorisms.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 17, 24 April 1902, Page 18

Dying Aphorisms.

A hankering after the dramatic possesses all great men when they are on the point of being stripped of their greatness. I speak from experience. I went to live at a boarding house. I grew gradually weaker and weaker, till I could no longer hide from myself the necessity of beginning to make preparations for the last sad scene. I had no will to make. I had nothing to leave except what remained of my poor emaoiated body. My fellow boarders insisted that I should have it cremated. It was the only sure way to circumvent the landlady; and they told me with tearß

in their voices that they would often think of me at that very same table, where, so often in days gone by, I had passed them the Lea 1 and Perrin's. But I prepared my dying aphorism, Strange to say, I fancy I have seen it before. ' Too underdone, and too much stew.' I learnt it by heart. I practised saying it like Henry Irving or Barrie Marschel. And I thought that if I could only have the lime juice or limelight turned upon me in that supreme hour, I wouldn't care a button whether Kipling wrote a eulogy of me or not. When I grew too weak to take the boarding house food, I began to get better. During my convalescence I read Mark Twain's aouount of a French duel in which a man said ' he died that France might live.' It cured me. A classical education has its advantages.