M P Shiel

The Last Miracle M P Shiel

Publisher Marketing: THE LAST MIRACLE TOWARDS the end of May 1900 the writer received as noteworthy a letter and packet of papers as it has been his lot to examine. They came from a good friend of mine, a Dr A. ister Browne, hI. A. Oxon., F. R. C. P., whom, as it happened that for some years I had been living mostly in France, and robne being in Norfolk, I had not seen during my visits to London. Moreover, as we were both bad correspondents, only three notes had passed between us in the course of those years. But in the May of 1900 there reached me the letter-and the packet-to which I refer, the packet consisting of four note-books full of shorthand, the letter also pencilled in shorthand, and this letter, together with the note-book marked 1 now publish. The note-book marked 11. has already appeared under the title of The Lord of the Sea, and that marked 111. under the title of The Purple Cloud, each in three languages while that marked IV. has been judged unsuitable to publication. The following is Brownes letter -- THE LAST MIRACLE DEAR OLD NAN, -I have been thinking of you, wishing that you were here to give me a last squeeze of the hand before I-go. Four days ago I felt a soreness in the throat, so in passing by old Johnsons burgery at Selbridge, I asked him to have a look at me. He muttered some- thing about membranous laryngitis which made me smile but by the time I reached home I was hoarse, and not smiling before night I had stridor. I at once telegraphed to London for Horsford, and he and Johnson have been opening my inside and burning it with the cautery, so I am breathing easier now, and it is wonderful how little I suffer but I am too old a hand not to know whats what the bronchi are involved-toolar, and, as a matter of fact, there isnt any hope. Horsford is still fondly hoping to add me to his successful-tracheotomy statistics but I have bet him not, and the consolation of my death will bc the beating of a specialist in his own line. I have been arranging some of my affairs, and remembered these note-books which I intended letting you have long ago but you know my habit of putting things off, and, moreover, the lady was alive from whose mouth I took down the words. She is now dead, and, as a man of books, you should bc intcrcsted, if you can manage to read them. I am under a little morphia at present, propped up in a nice little state of languor.......