I have sat by him all the night, being afraid he might wake and want
his food. His face was very white; and it changed, and he came to
look as he had looked when he was a little child in Eden long ago,
so sweet and good and dear. It carried me back over the abyss of
years, and I was lost in dreams and tears--oh, hours, I think. Then
I came to myself; and thinking he stirred, I kissed his cheek to
wake him, but he slumbered on and I was disappointed. His cheek was
cold. I brought sacks of wool and the down of birds and covered him,
but he was still cold, and I brought more. Adam has come again, and
says he is not yet warm. I do not understand it.
III
We cannot wake him! With my arms clinging about him I have looked
into his eyes, through the veil of my tears, and begged for one
little word, and he will not answer. Oh, is it that long sleep--is
it death? And will he wake no more?
FROM SATAN’S DIARY
Death has entered the world, the creatures are perishing; one of The
Family is fallen; the product of the Moral Sense is complete. The
Family think ill of death--they will change their minds.
SAMUEL ERASMUS MOFFETT
AUGUST 16, 1908
HIS CHARACTER AND HIS DEATH
_August 16th._--Early in the evening of the first day of this month
the telephone brought us a paralyzing shock: my nephew, Samuel E.
Moffett, was drowned. It was while sea bathing. The seas were
running high and he was urged not to venture out, but he was a
strong swimmer and not afraid. He made the plunge with confidence,
his frightened little son looking on. Instantly he was helpless. The
great waves tossed him hither and thither, they buried him, they
struck the life out of him. In a minute it was all over.
He was forty-eight years old, he was at his best, physically and
mentally, and was well on his way toward earned distinction. He was
large-minded and large-hearted, there was no blot nor fleck upon his
character, his ideals were high and clean, and by native impulse and
without effort he lived up to them.
He had been a working journalist, an editorial writer, for nearly
thirty years, and yet in that exposed position had preserved his
independence in full strength and his principles undecayed. Several
years ago he accepted a high place on the staff of _Collier’s
Weekly_ and was occupying it when he died.
In an early chapter of my _Autobiography_, written three years ago,
I have told how he wrote from San Francisco, when he was a stripling
and asked me to help him get a berth on a daily paper there; and how
he submitted to the severe conditions I imposed, and got the berth
and kept it sixteen years.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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