here lived one who also
saw death so, and laboured to draw the frightened eyes of men from the
hour-glass and the skull to the gracious vision of the deliverer and
friend. There hands which were dear to him have raised a place of
leave-taking upon a green slope, a house of farewell set upon the shore
to receive the last pledges from the living to the absolved and
unburdened dead.

When first I saw Compton it was a cloudless noon in August, the day of
days in which to come alone into this silent place. Out of the fiery
heat beaten from wall and path like a blinding spray of light, it is a
passage into a dimness of cool space, an air glaucous as the shade of
olives. There from the circuit of a dome look down kind faces of
immortal youth, in form and habit too tranquil for our life, but made
homely to us by the mercy in their eyes, and some quality of the white
soft hands which draws all weariness and all pain towards them. To me it
was as though some furious struggle in the waves were over, and swooning
out of life I had awakened upon a floor of translucent ocean, where, in
a gracious and tempered light, beings of a compassion too intense for
earth, each with a gesture that was not yet a touch, were charming all
the bruises of the lost battle away. Surely this is true vision of
things to come, and to such mercy we shall awaken. It cannot be that
when the eyes reopen they shall see the forms of dark apparitors, or
that the ears shall hear AEacus and Rhadamanthys speaking in dim halls
their cold, irrevocable dooms. No, but there shall be a pause and
respite upon the way from one to another life, and none may be conceived
more grateful than this rest, as it were a sojourn beneath waters of
Eunoe, where a flood of dear memories foreboding good shall absolve us
from the mortal sin of fear.

* * * * *

Turning back over these pages, I am conscious that I have failed to give
real experiences their proper life. Describing solitude I have been
dull; I have fixed the rushing flames of emotion in poor flamboyant
lines. I have written far more than any reader but yourself will have
cared to follow; but now at any rate the confession is over, and in the
future I shall work, and use my sight for a worthier end than
introspection. It has been said that the tale of any life is
interesting if sincerely told; and it may be that the most ordinary
lives have the advantage, because it is the common experience