Supreme Occasions
Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions. I knew of
an old gentleman who insisted on having the original polka played to
him as he lay upon his death-bed. In the only well-authenticated
words I have ever met with as spoken by a man who knew he was going
to be murdered, there is a commonness which may almost be called
Shakespearean. There had been many murders on or near some gold-
fields in New Zealand about the years 1863 or 1864, I forget where
but I think near the Nelson gold-fields, and at last the murderers
were taken. One was allowed to turn Queen's evidence and gave an
account of the circumstances of each murder. One of the victims, it
appeared, on being told they were about to kill him, said:
"If you murder me, I shall be foully murdered."
Whereupon they murdered him and he was foully murdered. It is a
mistake to expect people to rise to the occasion unless the occasion
is only a little above their ordinary limit. People seldom rise to
their greater occasions, they almost always fall to them. It is only
supreme men who are supreme at supreme moments. They differ from the
rest of us in this that, when the moment for rising comes, they rise
at once and instinctively.
The Aurora Borealis
I saw one once in the Gulf of the St. Lawrence off the island of
Anticosti. We were in the middle of it, and seemed to be looking up
through a great cone of light millions and millions of miles into the
sky.
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