One hot afternoon in July, in the hottest year of recent times, a man of about thirty-five years of age sat on a chair outside a very poor house in a very mean street of Hackney Wick. There was not a breath of air stirring, and, though the sun shone brilliantly, and the street was redolent with unsavoury smells, the poor fellow found the rays of the sun and the smells of the street preferable to the insufferably close atmosphere of the very little room--first floor back--in which he had lived for the last eighteen months. I had just come from a room where misery, poverty, and marvellous heroism had been strikingly illustrated. I neither saw the man nor smelt the unsavoury odours, for I was thinking of what I had seen, when I heard a faint but choking cough--one that told its story. I looked and stopped, and found myself face to face with the man on the chair.
His high cheek-bones, his hollow cheeks, and emaciated body and limbs told me that not much longer would he gasp for air in that unclean street, or lie waiting for death in his very, very small room. ‘You are very ill,’ I said, and he nodded his head. ‘What is the matter?’ ‘Consumption, but it is nearly all over.’ ‘Would you not be more comfortable in a hospital?’ ‘I have been in the Chest Hospital, but there is no hope.’ On further inquiry, I found that he was a single man, had no relations who knew or cared about him, and that he had come from the hospital to live with strangers, hoping that his time would be short. ‘But how do you manage to live?’ I asked. ‘Ah, sir,’ he said, ‘it is a race, and I don’t know which will be gone first--my money or my life. I knew years ago what was the matter with me, and I have been very careful and saving, and I did hope that I should leave enough to pay for my funeral.’ I got him some cooling drink, and told him that I would call and see him the following Tuesday, when I should again be in his neighbourhood.
I called on the appointed day, but his chair was not at the door, for he lay in his little room. When I went in he gave me his poor thin hand, saying: ‘I am glad you have come.’ I told him that if it gave him the least pleasure I would call every Tuesday afternoon. He looked at me and said: ‘I am glad, because you have kept your word.’ There was sad suggestiveness and deep pathos in his words and look. I had no need to inquire what he meant, for they told of promises lightly made and wickedly forgotten, of hopes raised never to be realized. After sponging his forehead with a little toilet vinegar, and putting a handful of flowers where he could fondle them, and a little fruit where he could reach it, I left him. Week by week I called upon him as he lay there waiting for the end in his stuffy little room. All the night long he lay alone, a very small, evil-smelling lamp for his companion; but night brought no relief, no welcome coolness, and all the night long, he told me, he lay and wished to God it were morning. But the morning and the brightness of the sun brought no welcome change, so during the day he lay and wished for the cool of the evening, for to sleep he had become a stranger. One day I called, and he was in great pain; he could not keep still, yet he had not strength to move. I wanted to soothe him, but I did not know how, so I said to him: ‘How can I help you?’ With his burning eyes he looked at me and said: ‘Ask God to let me sleep--if I could, I might be easier--or die.’ I knelt down by his bedside, and taking his poor hands into mine, I prayed that sleep might come upon him; and then, silent and still, I knelt there hand in hand with him for some minutes, and lo! ‘He gave His beloved sleep.’ Quietly withdrawing my hands, I left him peacefully sleeping, and took my last look at him, for I never saw him again.