Nor have I ever heard any genuine last words such as we read in books. I doubt if they ever occur. At the actual time of death the man’s body is far too busy with its dying for his mind to formulate any ideas. The nearest approach to a “last word” that I ever remember was when a very old and brilliant man, who, after a lifetime spent in the service of Australia, lay dying, full of years and honour, from suppression of urine that followed some weeks after an operation on his prostate. It was early in the war, and Austria, with her usual folly, was acting egregiously. The nurse was trying to rouse the old man by reading to him the war news. He suddenly sat up, and a flash of intelligence came over his face. “Pah--Austria with her idiot Archdukes--that was what Bismarck said, wasn’t it?” Then he fell back, and went to sleep; nor could the visits of his family and the injections of saline solution into his veins rouse him again from his torpor. He lay unconscious for nearly a week. That is the only instance of the “ruling passion strong in death” that I remember. He had always hated Bismarck and despised the Austrians, and for one brief moment hatred and contempt awakened his clouded brain. And Napoleon said, “_Tête d’armée_.” There is no need, so far as we can tell, to fear the actual dying. Death is no more to be feared than his twin-brother Sleep, as the very ancient Greeks of Homer surmised; it is _what comes after_ that many people fear. “To sleep--perchance to dream” nightmares? Well, I do not know what other people feel when they dream, but for myself I am fortunate enough to know, even in the midst of the most horrible nightmare, that it is all a dream; and I dare say that this is a privilege common to many people. The blessed sleep that comes to tired man in the early morning, with which cometh joy, is well worth going through nightmare to attain; and I think I am not speaking wildly in claiming that most men pass the happiest portions of their lives in that early morning sleep. One of the horrors of neurasthenia is that early morning sleep is often denied to the patient.