dropsy. Through it all he cheerfully kept up his
labors, rejoicing that he was allowed to do so much. His courage was
indomitable; his optimism under it all unwavering. His favorite
contention was that there is nothing in the world that is not good
for something, except war. That he hated, and his satire on the
militarism of Europe as its supreme folly was sharp and biting.

Of such quality was this extraordinary man of whom half the world
was talking while the fewest, even in his own home city, ever saw
him. Fewer still knew him well. It suited his temper and native
modesty, as it did the state of his bodily health, to keep himself
secluded. His motto was: "_bene vixit qui bene latuit_--he has
lived well who has kept himself well hidden"--and his contention was
always that in proportion as one could keep himself in the
background his cause prospered, if it was a good cause. When kings
and queens came visiting, he could not always keep in hiding, though
he often tried. On one of his days of extreme prostration the
dowager empress of Russia knocked vainly at his door. She pleaded so
hard to be allowed to see Dr. Finsen that they relented at last, and
she sat by his bed and wept in sympathy with his sufferings, while
he with his brave smile on lips that would twitch with pain did his
best to comfort her. She and Queen Alexandra, both daughters of King
Christian, carried the gospel of hope and healing from his study to
their own lands, and Light Institutes sprang up all over Europe.

In his own life he treated nearly nineteen hundred sufferers,
two-thirds of them lupus patients, and scarce a handful went from
his door unhelped. When his work was done he fell asleep with a
smile upon his lips, and the "universal judgment was one of
universal thanksgiving that he had lived." He was forty-three years
old.

When the news of his death reached the Rigsdag, the Danish
parliament, it voted his widow a pension such as had been given to
few Danes in any day. The king, his sons and daughters, and, as it
seemed, the whole people followed his body to the grave. The rock
from his native island marks the place where he lies. His work is
his imperishable monument. His epitaph he wrote himself in the
speech another read when the Nobel prize was awarded him, for he was
then too ill to speak.

"May the Light Institute grasp the obligation that comes with its
success, the obligation to maintain what I account the highest aim
in science-