Summary

Portrait of Dinah Craik Dinah Craik John Halifax, Gentleman — Chapter XXXIX

Phineas, your father's was the happiest death I ever knew."
"It may be—I am not sure. John," for again something in his look and manner struck me—"why do you say this to me?"
"I scarcely know. Yes, I do know."
"Tell me, then."
He looked at me across the table—steadily, eye to eye, as if he would fain impart to my spirit the calmness that was in his own. "I believe, Phineas, that when I die my death will be not unlike your father's."
Something came wildly to my lips about "impossibility," the utter impossibility, of any man's thus settling the manner of his death, or the time.
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Portrait of Dinah Craik Dinah Craik John Halifax, Gentleman — Chapter XXXIX

That night we gathered, as we never thought we should gather again in this world, round the family table- -Guy, Edwin, Walter, Maud, Louise, and William Ravenel—all changed, yet not one lost. A true love-feast it was: a renewed celebration of the family bond, which had lasted through so much sorrow, now knitted up once more, never to be broken.
When we came quietly to examine one another and fall into one another's old ways, there was less than one might have expected even of outward change.
Source: Wikisource

Portrait of Dinah Craik Dinah Craik John Halifax, Gentleman — Chapter XXXIX

I felt how narrow is the span between the life mortal and the life immortal— how, in truth, both are one with God.
"Ay," he said, "that is exactly what I mean. To me there is always something impious in the 'preparing for death' that people talk about; as if we were not continually, whether in the flesh or out of it, living in the Father's presence; as if, come when He will, the Master should not find all of us watching? Do you remember saying so to me, one day?"
Source: Wikisource

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