I have set the account down word for word, with all the hiatuses and
breaks that by nature of the extraordinary circumstances under which it
was written were bound to appear in it. I have allowed it to end
precisely as Karslake was forced to end it, in the middle of a sentence.
God knows the real end is plain enough and was not far off when the poor
fellow began the last phrase that never was to be finished.
The value of the thing is self-apparent. Besides the narrative of
incidents it is a simple setting forth of a young man's emotions in the
very face of violent death. You will remember the distinguished victim
of the guillotine, a lady who on the scaffold begged that she might be
permitted to write out the great thoughts that began to throng her mind.
She was not allowed to do so, and the record is lost. Here is a case
where the record is preserved. But Karslake, being a young man not very
much given to introspection, his work is more a picture of things seen
than a transcription of things thought. However, one may read between
the lines; the very breaks are eloquent, while the break at the end
speaks with a significance that no words could attain.
The manuscript in itself is interesting. It is written partly in pencil,
partly in ink (no doubt from a fountain pen), on sheets of manila paper
torn from some sort of long and narrow account-book. In two or three
places there are smudges where the powder-blackened finger and thumb
held the sheets momentarily.
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