conventional in our conceptions of them. He wanted to know what reason
there was for representing Life as a very radiant and bounding party,
when Life usually neither shone nor bounded; and why Death should be
figured as an enemy with a dart, when it was so often the only friend a
man had left, and had the habit of binding up wounds rather than
inflicting them. The personifications were all right, he said, but the
poets and painters did not know how they really looked. By the way,"
Wanhope broke off, "did you happen to see Hauptmann's 'Hannele' when it
was here?"

None of us had, and we waited rather restively for the passing of the
musing fit which he fell into. After a while he resumed at a point whose
relation to the matter in hand we could trace:

"It was extremely interesting for all reasons, by its absolute
fearlessness and freshness in regions where there has been nothing but
timid convention for a long time; but what I was thinking of was the
personification of Death as it appears there. The poor little dying
pauper, lying in her dream at the almshouse, sees the figure of Death. It
is not the skeleton with the dart, or the phantom with the shrouded face,
but a tall, beautiful young man,--as beautiful as they could get into the
cast, at any rate,--clothed in simple black, and standing with his back
against the mantlepiece, with his hands resting on the hilt of a long,
two-handed sword. He is so quiet that you do not see him until some time
after the child has seen him. When she begins to question him whether she
may not somehow get to heaven without dying, he answers with a sort of
sorrowful tenderness, a very sweet and noble compassion, but unsparingly
as to his mission. It is a singular moment of pure poetry that makes the
heart ache, but does not crush or terrify the spirit."