Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/33

xxxiv As he passed out of the Roman territory and saw the Italian tricolor waving by the road-side, the dying man raised himself feebly in his carriage and lifted his hat to the emblem of liberty. By the time he had reached Florence the fatigue of the journey had left him but a little residue of days to live. He knew it. He had wished to be spared, and felt, as he had said years before in his Sermon of the Immortal Life, “It is selfish to wish for death when there is so much need of us here.” But when the time came he was calm as a child. The writer, who, although aided by his words and honoured by his friendship for many years, had never seen him till that hour, found him on his bed of death, conscious of the inevitable future, but looking at it as peacefully as if it had been a summons to his home across the ocean. “You know I am not afraid to die,” he said; and here a smile, the most beautiful we ever saw on a human countenance, broke over his face. “You know I am not afraid to die, but I would fain have lived a little longer to finish my work. God gave me large powers, and I have but half used them.” Half used them! And he said this on his death-bed, whither he had been brought in the prime of manhood by over use of them, by the utter sacrifice of his health and strength in the cause of Truth and Right! He lingered on a few days, gently falling asleep, as it seemed, and dreaming, after the wont of the dying, that he was going on a journey, going home after his long wanderings, and only wakening, at intervals, to give a few parting gifts to friends (among others the bronze inkstand, from which these pages are written), and to comfort his wife, and say tenderest words of thanks for the little offerings of flowers, or aught beside we brought him. Now and then he would rouse himself, and speak his old brave thoughts, answering, as if to a familiar and welcome voice, if we named sacred things. Once, for example, when he asked the day of the week, and we said, “It is Sunday, a blessed day, is it not, dear friend?” “Yes!” he said, with sudden energy; “when one has got over the superstition of it, a most blessed day.” Gradually and without pain the end came on, and on the 10th of May, 1860, he passed away from earth in perfect peace.

We cannot regard such an end otherwise than with solemn thankfulness, that God allows such men to live and work and die among us, to show us what man may do and be in this life, and to raise our thoughts to what must be the life to come,