A Christmas Sermon: From the Deathbed of Robert Louis Stevenson

By the time this paper appears, I shall have been talking for twelve months; and it is thought I should take my leave in a formal and seasonable manner. Valedictory eloquence is rare, and death-bed sayings have not often hit the mark of the occasion. Charles Second, wit and skeptic, a man whose life had been one long lesson in human incredulity, an easy-going comrade, a maneuvering king -remembered and embodied all his wit and skepticism along with more than his usual good humor in the famous "I am afraid, gentlemen, I am an unconscionable time a-dying.”