admiration for the way he kept going full speed to the very end, starting new books and fresh experiments even when he knew he would not have time to get half-way through with them, and discussing high schemes just as though he expected years in which to carry them out—instead of days.
Here was a man absolutely without faith, or any belief in God or future life, who walked straight up to a miserable death under full steam, with nothing to console or buoy him up, and without friends to sympathize, and who never for a single instant flinched or whimpered. There burned in his heart the fire of a really strong will. It was the first time I had realized at close quarters what this meant, and when I went to his funeral I felt full of real sorrow, and have never forgotten the scene at his death-bed when the keen set face relaxed nothing of its decision to the very last.
