A Handful of Stars: Texts That Have Moved Great Minds

cant as that testimony is. I need have summoned neither Daniel Defoe nor Sir Walter Scott. I could have dispensed w

ard the

een Al

it seemed as if the life of King Edward--then Prince of Wales--hung by a single thread. Nobody thought of anything else; the whole world seemed to surround that royal sickbed; the Empire was in a state o

he prayers of the congregation are earnestly sought for His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales, who is now most seriously ill.' This was on December the tenth. For the next few days the Prince hovered between life and death. The crisis came on the fourteenth, which, ominously enough, was the anniversary of the death of the Prince Consort. But, whilst the superstitious shook their heads, the Princess clung desperately and believingly to the hope that the text had brought her. And that day, in a way that was almost dramatic, the change came. Sir William Gull, the royal physician, had done all that the highest human skill could suggest; he felt that the issue was now in other hands than his. He was taking a short walk up and down the terrace, when one of the nurses came running to him with pallid face and startled eyes. 'Oh, co

ever, and the Coronation took place on the ninth of August. Those familiar with the Coronation Service noticed a striking innovation. The words: 'When I was in trouble, I called upon the Lord, and He heard

e, and I will deliver thee, and th

pon the Lord, and He heard me,' sa

le through my sin,' said Robinson Crusoe, 'and when

shall call on the Name of the