The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-10-15
LAST WORDS OF GREAT
 MEN WHEN FACING DEATH

Mozart died while his daughter was singing to him his Requiem
 Among pathetic deathbed utterances none is more poignant than that of Char lotte Bronte. Reading the anxiety and sorrow on the faces of those about her, she said; "Oh! l am not going to die, am I? He will not separate us we have been so happy" Those who knew the moving story of the novelist's life will realize the intensity of that cry of anguish as the fear struck to her heart that her brief year of married happiness was to be her last.
 Equally touching, but in very differ- ent and far happier way, was the death- bed of Mrs. Browning, the poetess. Rob- ert Browning, her husband, described the scene In a letter written just after her death. ''rhe last word was, when I asked How do you feel?' Beautiful .
 Addison, the choicest spirit of his age, said to his stepson, the Earl of War wick, when near his end, See in what peace a Christian can die!' When Vespasian. the Roman Emperor, who had risen to the purple from the obscurity of a Spanish village felt that he was dying. he told his attendants to help him to his feet.
 An Emperor" he said, should die standing" and then he uttered one of the grlmmest jests that ever fell from the lips of of dying man. Truly" said he. "I feel I am becoming god" It was the Roman custom to apotheoslze the dead Emperor as soon as the breath had left his body, and Vespasians sar- casm showed how little the rough soldier of the cap believed in the servile adula- tion of palaces.
 Death of Nero.
 daot Of of the most tragic in all history Suetonius has de- scribed in vivid language how the fugi- tive Emperor lay in hiding In miser- able hovel outside the city aware that the search parties were close upon his trail. and trying to nerve himself to die with dignity by his own hand. He kept muttering, Come. rouse yourself" This befits not Nero" "'Tis shameful for me to livel" Then the consummate actor in his nature came to the surface, and he exclaimed. What an artist perishes in me!' And when the sound of horses hoofs came nearer and nearer, he quoted a line from Greek play, 'Iol the sound of swift footed horses strikes upon my ear" Then, when at length he took the sword and stabbed himself his last words con- tained the bitter cry, Such Is loyalty Yet he found loyalty even in death, for his old nurse took up the body and buried 1t with loving care
 Passages from the Psalms have often been on the lips of dying Christians. The verse Into Thy Hands, o Lord, l com mend my spirit" was breathed in their last moments by Basil the Great in 379, by Charlema gne at Aix-la-Chapelle In S14 by Martin Luther, and by the pious George Herbert in the rectory house at Bemerton.
 Mary Queen of Scots uttered 1t with a sigh as she knelt before the scaffold at Fotheringay, and the line Unto Thy hands, 0 Lord. into Thy hands was the last spoken by Sir Henry Irving on the stage at Bradford before he was stricken down.
 When Charles Wesley lay dying he quoted from the Seventy-third Psalm. My flesh and my heart faileth,' when his more illustrious brother was on his deathbed, in 1791, it was In the Psalms that he found consolation.
 "The clouds drop fatness' he was heard to say and again. "The Lord of Hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our refuge" and, last of alL '"rhe best of all is God is with us."