Note 31 — Chapter XII

Every one remembers that Goethe’s last words are said to have been, “More Light;” and perhaps what has occurred in the text may be supposed a plagiarism from those words. But, in fact, nothing is more common than the craving and demand for light a little before death. Let any consult his own sad experience in the last moments of those whose gradual close he has watched and tended. What more frequent than a prayer to open the shutters and let in the sun? What complaint more repeated, and more touching, than “that it is growing dark?” I once knew a sufferer—who did not then seem in immediate danger—suddenly order the sick room to be lit up as if for a gala. When this was told to the physician, he said gravely, “No worse sign.”