"... I went yesterday, expecting once more to speak with him. I found him lying _dead, twelve hours dead_. I saw him with Mrs. Jefferies and their little Phyllis. A pitiful sight to see them kiss the poor cold face! God help them! All through his last days his wife was with him _day and night_; a young country girl, who behaved nobly all through, was her only help.... His long, long illness of six years (four years before at Eltham he looked near death)--this long, wearisome time had almost persuaded many who knew him not intimately that his illness was partly imaginary. He proved it otherwise. A soldier who in health, high spirits, and excitement, rides to what appears certain death is called a hero: glory and honours are heaped upon him; but what is that compared with years of fighting without cessation, and the _absolute certainty_ of defeat always present to the mind? I asked Mrs. Jefferies if he had made a will. She said: 'No; surely it would have been useless, we have nothing. A woman singly, strong as I am, could rough it; but if something can be done for the children--.' Something shall be done. I had to call at my framemaker's to put off an appointment. I told him roughly what had happened to me yesterday. He had never heard of Jefferies, and knew nothing of his work; but he said, 'I shall be glad if anything can be done if you will put us down for two guineas.' All those who are country born and bred, and have a heart inside their body, have always recognised and admired poor Jefferies' writing. Shall I say what I think and _know_, that in all our literature until now he has never had a rival, and that it is most likely he will never be equalled? In a hundred years he will be only more truly appreciated than at present. The number of men who combine the love and the knowledge of literary work is more limited, perhaps, in this age than in any previous one. Few people, again, of intelligence and refinement of heart and mind live completely in the country, and much, very much of his work, will be always unintelligible to those who cannot exist in a country-house unless it is full of frequently-changing guests. I have been trying by a different art for thirty years--equal to almost the whole of his life on earth--to convey an idea to others of some such subjects, and I feel with shame that in the work of half a year I do not get so near the heart and truth of Nature as he in one paragraph. With strict charge that it should not leave my hands, Mrs. Jefferies lent me the proof of an article which appeared in _Longman's Magazine_ in spring, 1886. It was the very last copy he wrote with his own hand. Since then his wife wrote from his dictation. Read this quotation from it, which touched me greatly yesterday: