Sir Harry Parkes in China - Stanley Lane-Poole

Sir Harry Parkes in China by Stanley Lane-Poole..This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1901 edition. Excerpt: ... make him happy. He took no heed of the symptoms of serious illness, and increased them by his unremitting attention to work,

which no persuasion or remonstrance would induce him to relax. One day he was seen painfully gathering up some papers that had fallen on the floor, and his reply to an entreaty that he would lie down and rest was Sir Harry all over--' My dear fellow, the Government don't pay me for lying down!' He was working within three days of his death, and it was work, not the ordinary attack of remittent fever from which he was suffering, that killed him--gently, in his sleep, --on Sunday morning, March 22nd, 1885. 'He never allowed his brain a moment's rest, and his ceaseless mental activity rendered him abnormally sensitive to an illness which, though not light, would not, at the stage which it had reached, have given cause for alarm in ordinary circumstances.' So wrote Hillier at the time, and O'Conor, in announcing the sad tidings to Consul-General Hughes (26th March) said the same: -- 'Something seems to have suddenly given way in the brain or the heart: in fact he died from the unceasing strain put on a brain requiring long rest and repose. He had not a thought but what was devoted to his country's interest, and a truer patriot or more single-minded, able Minister England has never had. I little thought that he would be cut off in the prime of his life and labours, and I cannot say how sincerely I mourn him. I had learnt in the time I had had the pleasure of serving under him both to admire his remarkable talents and to esteem him above men as the devoted servant of his country. * I saw [added Mr O'Conor in a later letter] that the country had lost a great Englishman, and that British interests had lost their ablest.