Abaft the Funnel

by Rudyard Kipling

"He was an old man," I said.

"Ye-es. More than middle-aged," said they.

"And he outlived his reputation?"

"Oh, no, or how would he have taken the designs for the Burgoyne Cathedral? Why, the very day he died...."

"Yes," said I. "He died at the end of a completed work—his design finished, his prize awarded?"

"Yes; but he didn't live to...."

"And his illness lasted seventeen days, of twenty-four hours each?"

"Yes."

"And he was tended by his own kith and kin, dying with his head on his wife's breast, his hand in his only son's hand, without any thought of their possible poverty to vex him. Are these things so?"