Sunday 11th. We made the port of San Blas about 10 A.M. but did not remain long.
[Here the diary abruptly ends. Three day’s later the ship must have reached Acapulco, on leaving which point Dr. Halsey became dangerously ill of fever and for nine days was unconscious, as described by him in a previous chapter. During the remainder of the voyage home he was never able to complete these notes of his trip. When again he took up the unfinished task, more than forty years had passed over his head and when he finally completed it he had reached almost the end of his allotted days.]
EDITORIAL NOTE—ILLNESS AND DEATH.
After the attack of Chagres fever Dr. Halsey continued through life a man in robust health. The only subsequent illness he ever had was the last. He wrote as follows in a letter of January, 1886:
“Three years more bring me to seventy years of age. I have good reason for feeling that I may not reach that period, and as time develops the truth of my views I can dispose of my affairs to better advantage than executors could. I am perfectly aware that my right kidney is affected with disease. I have been conscious of it for two years and have kept it measurably in abeyance, but it is gradually making progress. I have lost flesh within that time in very marked degree. I weigh less than 180, whereas I have been up to 212.
“I tell you this, not to alarm you, as it is only to be looked for as a final result some time in the future, though serious enough to warn me to put my house in order. I can keep the disease under control for some time probably, and as long as I can do so, prefer to remain in business. I have no fears of death or the future. With my children all fitted for life and well situated, my life work is finished and I am ready to yield to the universal demand of nature. I feel that I have lived not wholly in vain; that the world in some small degree may have been benefited. Although conscious that I have not filled the full measure of what might have been, want of training and guidance after I was left an orphan, is in a measure to be charged with the shortcomings. I am thus frank with my boys.”
After the last chapter of his Reminiscences had appeared in “The Unadilla Times” his health failed alarmingly. He wrote on Jan. 17, 1891: “I have lost ground in a quite marked way during the last week including the sense of feeling in my right foot. A little exertion exhausts me. To the Post Office and back is about all I can do. I feel that my worldly career is nearly ended, though I hope to see the Spring.” Three days later he wrote in what is probably his last letter: “If I lose ground as fast as I have lost it in the past two weeks, my stay here is short. I have my own affairs arranged in as good shape as possible, [he had made his will between the writing of these letters and had written out his wishes in regard to the funeral] and am ready to submit to the inevitable at any time.”
A few days before the end came, he was heard to say: “I am content enough, and yet I could have wished to visit Fred”—a reference to his son Frederick A. Halsey, detained at his home in Sherbrooke, Canada, by illness in his own family. His esteemed friend of many years, Dr. Paris Garner Clark, was now in constant attendance, visiting him each day and several times was called in the late hours of the night. During the last week he lost ground with unexpected rapidity, but on Sunday, February 15th, was able to sit up and dictate some final instructions as to his Reminiscences.
The end came on Tuesday the 17th. After a night of peaceful sleep, in the early forenoon of a beautiful winter’s day, the sky blue and cloudless, the earth white with snow, he passed away as if in a sleep. Among his final words were these: “I am going, going; but we have had a happy life. God bless you all.”
The approach of dissolution, which he had noted with professional discernment from week to week and day to day was thus accepted in the spirit in which he had performed the duties of life—without fear and with a manly heart.