Men are seldom more commonplace than on supreme occasions. I knew of an
old gentleman who insisted on having the original polka played to him as
he lay upon his death-bed. In the only well-authenticated words I have
ever met with as spoken by a man who knew he was going to be murdered,
there is a commonness which may almost be called Shakespearean. There
had been many murders on or near some gold-fields in New Zealand about
the years 1863 or 1864, I forget where but I think near the Nelson
gold-fields, and at last the murderers were taken. One was allowed to
turn Queen’s evidence and gave an account of the circumstances of each
murder. One of the victims, it appeared, on being told they were about
to kill him, said:
“If you murder me, I shall be foully murdered.”
Whereupon they murdered him and he was foully murdered. It is a mistake
to expect people to rise to the occasion unless the occasion is only a
little above their ordinary limit. People seldom rise to their greater
occasions, they almost always fall to them. It is only supreme men who
are supreme at supreme moments. They differ from the rest of us in this
that, when the moment for rising comes, they rise at once and
instinctively.