“‘Is that you, Horace?’

“‘No, papa.’

“’Oh, I see!  I thought you were Horace; for he was talking to me just now, and I suppose has just left the room.’”

Speaking of his father, one day, suddenly and without introduction, he exclaimed,—­“There is one thing I deeply regret, that I did not know my dear father better; for I am sure a better, kinder, or juster man could never have existed.”

When death seemed approaching, the physician recommended that a telegram should be sent to the eldest daughter,[A] who resided in Ireland, but he forbade any mention of this fact to the patient.  De Quincey seemed to have a prophetic feeling that she was on her way to him, saying, “Has M. got to that town yet, that we stopped at when we went to Ireland?  How many hours will it be before she can be here?  Let me see,—­there are eight hours before I can see her, and three added to that!” His daughter came sooner than the family expected; but the time tallied very nearly with the computation he had made.  On the morning his daughter arrived occurred the first intimation his family had seen that the hand of death was laid upon him.  He had passed a quiet, but rather sleepless night, appearing “much the same, yet more than ordinarily loving.”  After greeting his child, he said, “And how does mamma’s little girl like her leaving her?” “Oh, they were very glad for me to come to grandpapa, and they sent you this kiss,—­which they did of their own accord.”  He seemed much pleased.  It was evident that M. presented herself to him as the mother of children, the constant theme of his wanderings.  Once when his daughter quitted the room, he said, “They are all leaving me but my dear little children.”  “I heard him call, one day, distinctly, ’Florence!  Florence!  Florence!’—­again, ’My dear, dear mother!’—­and to the last he called us ‘my love,’ and it sounded like no other sound ever uttered.  I never heard such pathos as there was in it, and in every tone of his voice.  It gave me an idea of a love that passeth all understanding.”

[Footnote A:  De Quincey, at his death, had two sons and three daughters.  The, eldest of the daughters became the wife of Robert Craig of Ireland.  It was this one, and the youngest, who were present during his last hours.  The second daughter, Florence, was with her husband (a colonel of the British army) in India.  The two sons were both absent:  one in India, a captain in the army; the other, a physician, in Brazil.]

During the next night he was thought dying, “but he lingered on and on till half past nine the next morning.  He told me something about ‘to-morrow morning,’ and something about sunshine; but the thought that he was talking about what he would never see drove the exact idea out of my head, though I am sure it was morning in another world he was talking of.”