H. B. Marriott Watson

“ The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
'I have lived some sixty years,' said he; 'and my own death will be at the tail of very many.'
Dick's eyelids drooped. Life, then, was so mortal to this man that its termination must be but an unessential incident, so slight and common as to pass without record in the memory. To die with those sharp, expert eyes upon him were to add to the terrors of dissolution; far less disquieting were the cold and pallid walls, the vacant air, the droning silence. ”

“ The habit of manliness, like the pleasant vices, had faded inconceivably; the ghost of a strong will, bloodless and frail, stared wofully through its prison-bars. The spirit lay a-dying with the flesh, leaving vivid only the sense of horror and the faculty of tears. Thrills of a soft affection stirred along his nerves, and gentle voices were calling in his ears. It was strange how he could resume those preterite feelings, upon which his memory had made no call for years which he had long since flung off as attachments unworthy of the larger mind. ”

“ As he approached death he must fit his spirit for the dissolution: must, at least, withdraw it from the interests of the street, lest it should take its separation too desperately at the moment of departure. To think upon that packed life, its marvellous passions, its snug corners, its spacious breadth and singular continuity, the very chequers in its ample warmth and brightness—to take all this info his thoughts in a flash, and to forecast his good-byes, chilled his heart to an extremity of cold. He was upon the precipice, with his eyes full-opened on the fall ”