He spoke in English, because I had taught both him and his sister that language.

At the last I learned--for the first time--that it was always worrying him, and almost breaking his little heart, that he could never compete with the black boys in their games of strength and skill; and no doubt he would have become an outcast were it not that he was my son.
Almost his last whispered words to me were that he would be able to assist me more in the Spirit-land than ever he could hope to do in the flesh.

He was perfectly conscious to the last, and as I knelt down by his couch of fragrant eucalyptus leaves, and stooped low to catch his whispered message, he told me he seemed to be entering a beautiful new country, where the birds always sang and the flowers bloomed for ever.
Spirit voices kept calling him, he said, and he felt himself being irresistibly drawn away from me.
Upon my own feelings I do not wish to dwell.

All I will say is I kissed my boy on the eyes and mouth, and then, with a soft "Good-bye, they have come for me," he closed his eyes for ever.
I felt it was to be.

A few days afterwards the little girl, my remaining child, was taken ill, and so feeble was she, that she soon joined her brother in the better land.