How little was there left to this old man to make life desirable, and yet
how keenly, I afterwards found, he clung to it. Have we not all of us seen
those to whom life was not only _undesirable_, but positively painful--a
mere series of bodily torments, yet hold to it with a desperate and
pitiable tenacity--old children or young, it is all the same.
See how a sleepy child will put off the inevitable departure for bed. The
little creature's eyes blink and stare, and it needs constant jogging to
prevent his nodding off into the slumber which nature craves. His waking is
a pain; he is quite worn out, and peevish, and stupid, and yet he implores
a respite, and deprecates repose, and vows he is not sleepy, even to the
moment when his mother takes him in her arms, and carries him, in a sweet
slumber, to the nursery. So it is with us old children of earth and the
great sleep of death, and nature our kind mother. Just so reluctantly we
part with consciousness, the picture is, even to the last, so interesting;
the bird in the hand, though sick and moulting, so inestimably better than
all the brilliant tenants of the bush.
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