his eyes and glistened on his cheeks; he carried a great open
book, and the binding was of velvet, with great silver clasps.

"Mother!" cried the boy, "only hear what I have read."

And the child sat by the bedside, and read from the book of Him who
suffered death on the cross to save men, and even those who were not yet
born.

"Greater love there is not"--

And a roseate hue spread over the cheeks of the Queen, and her eyes
gleamed, for she saw that from the leaves of the book there bloomed the
loveliest rose, that sprang from the blood of Christ shed on the cross.

"I see it!" she said: "he who beholds this, the loveliest rose on earth,
shall never die."

A VISION OF THE LAST DAY

By HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

Of all the days of our life the greatest and most solemn is the day on
which we die. Hast thou ever tried to realize that most sure, most
portentous hour, the last hour we shall spend on earth?

There was a certain man, an upholder of truth and justice, a Christian
man and orthodox, so the world esteemed him. And, in sooth, it may be
that some good thing was found in him, since in sleep, amid the visions
of the night, it pleased the Father of spirits to reveal him to himself,
making manifest to him what he was in truth, namely, one of those who
trust in themselves that they are righteous and despise others.

He went to rest, secure that his accounts were right with all men, that
he had paid his dues and wrought good works that day; of the secret
pride of his heart, of the harsh words that had passed his lips, he took
no account at all. And so he slept, and in his sleep Death stood by his
bedside, a glorious Angel, strong, spotless, beautiful, but unlike every
other angel, stern, unsmiling, pitiless of aspect.

"Thine hour is come, and thou must follow me!" spake Death. And Death's
cold finger touched the man's feet, whereupon they became like ice, then
touched his forehead, then his heart. And the chain that bound the
immortal soul to clay was riven asunder, and the soul was free to follow
the Angel of Death.

But during those brief seconds, while yet that awful touch thrilled
through feet, and head, and heart, there passed over the dying man, as
in great, heaving, ocean waves, the recollection of all that he had
wrought and felt in his whole life; just as one shuddering glance into a
whirlpool suffices to reveal in thought rapid as lightning, the entire
unfathomable depth; just as in one mo