“Every time he heard the sound of bells, the throbbing of his heart must have nearly killed him. He used always to turn quite white—there was no trick about it. It was imagination acting physically on the body.
“His death as Matthias—the death of a strong, robust man—was different from all his other stage deaths. He did really almost die—he imagined his death with such horrible intensity. His eyes would disappear upward, his face grow gray, his limbs cold.
“No wonder, then, that the first time that the Wolverhampton doctor’s warning was disregarded, and Henry played ‘The Bells,’ at Bradford, his heart could not stand the strain. Within twenty-four hours of his death as Matthias, he was dead.”
(1657)
INTENTION
While “we have this treasure in earthen vessels” we can never fully manifest the best that is in us. Benjamin R. Bulkeley tells us in the following verse that God knows how much better we intend than we can do:
There was never a song that was sung by thee,
But a sweeter one was meant to be.
There was never a deed that was grandly done,
But a greater was meant by some earnest one,