On either hand we behold a birth, of which, as of the moon, we see
but half. We are outside the one, waiting for a life from the
unknown; we are inside the other, watching the departure of a spirit
from the womb of the world into the unknown. To the region whither
he goes, the man enters newly born. We forget that it is a birth,
and call it a death. The body he leaves behind is but the placenta
by which he drew his nourishment from his mother Earth. And as the
child-bed is watched on earth with anxious expectancy, so the couch
of the dying, as we call them, may be surrounded by the
birth-watchers of the other world, waiting like anxious servants to
open the door to which this world is but the wind-blown porch.
Extremes meet. As a man draws nigh to his second birth, his heart
looks back to his childhood. When Dr. Anderson knew that he was
dying, he retired into the simulacrum of his father's benn end.
As Falconer sat thinking, the doctor spoke. They were low, faint,
murmurous sounds, for the lips were nearly at rest. Wanted no more
for utterance, they were going back to the holy dust, which is God's
yet.
'Father, father!' he cried quickly, in the tone and speech of a
Scotch laddie, 'I'm gaein' doon. Haud a grup o' my han'.'
When Robert hurried to the bedside, he found that the last breath
had gone in the words. The thin right hand lay partly closed, as if
it had been grasping a larger hand. On the face lay confidence just
ruffled with apprehension: the latter melted away, and nothing
remained but that awful and beautiful peace which is the farewell of
the soul to its servant.
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