The things we do!

For the rest, Graham felt in
himself small capacity for preaching or exhortation, and
indeed from a professional point of view, he dreaded a
possible outburst of excitement and remorse, as lessening his
last chance of saving his patient's life; and yet to him--
young, full of energy, and hope, and resolution, though no
nearer perfection and tried wisdom than any other man with
crude beliefs and enthusiasms and untested powers for good or
evil--to him death still appeared one of the most awful facts
in life, and he could not think unmoved of the task of
announcing to such a man as this, that his last chances were
over, and such life as one can live in this world was for him
a thing of the past for ever now. Not a twelvemonth later,
Graham had stood by so many dying men, had listened to so many
dying speeches, had seen death met in so many forms, and with
such strange variety of character, with indifference or
calmness, or resignation, with wild triumph, or wilder
remorse, that he looked back with a sort of wonder on his
present inexperience and perplexity.


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