Quite apart from this natural and instinctive attitude of mind there is with many a poignant fear of death itself, of the actual act of dying and of the terror and suffering that may be thereby involved. This fear is ill-founded. The last moments of life are more distressing to witness than to endure. What is termed “the agony of death” concerns the watcher by the bedside rather than the being who is the subject of pity. A last illness may be long, wearisome and painful, but the closing moments of it are, as a rule, free from suffering. There may appear to be a terrible struggle at the end, but of this struggle the subject is unconscious. It is the onlooker who bears the misery of it. To the subject there is merely a moment—
“When something like a white wave of the sea Breaks o’er the brain and buries us in sleep.”
Death is often sudden, may often come during sleep, or may approach so gradually as to be almost unperceived. Those who resent the drawbacks of old age may take some consolation from the fact that the longer a man lives the easier he dies.
A medical friend of mine had among his patients a very old couple who, having few remaining interests in the world, had taken up the study and arrangement of their health as a kind of hobby or diversion. To them the subject was like a game of “Patience,” and was treated in somewhat the same way. They had made an arrangement with the doctor that he should look in and see them every morning. He would find them, in the winter, in a cosy, old-fashioned room, sitting round the fire in two spacious arm-chairs which were precisely alike and were precisely placed, one on the right hand and one on the left. The old lady, with a bright ribbon in her lace cap and a shawl around her shoulders, would generally have some knitting on her knees, while the old gentleman, in a black biretta, would be fumbling with a newspaper and a pair of horn spectacles.
The doctor’s conversation every morning was, of necessity, monotonous. He would listen to accounts of the food consumed, of the medicine taken and of the quantity of sleep secured, just as he would listen to the details of a game of “Patience.” Now and then there would be some startling “move,” some such adventure as a walk to the garden gate or the bold act of sitting for an hour at the open window. After having received this report he would compliment the lady on her knitting and on the singing of her canary and would discuss with the gentleman such items of news as he had read in the paper.