noon
My poor friend `` Oberon '' -- -LSB- See the sketch or story entitled `` The Devil in Manuscript , '' in `` The Snow-Image , and other Twice-Told Tales . '' -RSB- -- for let me be allowed to distinguish him by so quaint a name -- sleeps with the silent ages . He died calmly . Though his disease was pulmonary , his life did not flicker out like a wasted lamp , sometimes shooting up into a strange temporary brightness ; but the tide of being ebbed away , and the noon of his existence waned till , in the simple phraseology of Scripture , `` he was not . '' The last words he said to me were , `` Burn my papers , -- all that you can find in yonder escritoire ; for I fear there are some there which you may be betrayed into publishing . I have published enough ; as for the old disconnected journal in your possession -- '' But here my poor friend was checked in his utterance by that same hollow cough which would never let him alone . So he coughed himself tired , and sank to slumber .