Joseph Conrad's Last Writing
After Heart of Darkness novelist Joseph Conrad died in 1924, New York Times Magazine published his unfinished final work: an essay about the life of a sailor.
The NYT's introduction explains that the article was about 75% finished at the time. Conrad's piece ended midway through with this paragraph, the final words he would ever write. (The phrase "that padlock story" refers to an aforementioned anecdote about a sailor who would supposedly padlock the sails on Marco Polo's ship.)
Anyhow, I am sure he is a fitting person to play his part in that padlock story. I wonder who was the man to tell it? He must have been an ironmonger trying for a new outlet for his wares. And to what sort of audience? Personally, I would have been afraid to tell it to the horsemarines, that mysterious corps which is famed for its capacity to swallow anything in the way of a yarn.
Not exactly Conrad's greatest writing. But this excerpt from Heart of Darkness, which I read for Mr. Connelly's English class my freshman year of high school, might be:
Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires.
Joseph Conrad's Last Writing: The Truth Which Rebukes the Legend of the Sailor's Life as It Does That of the Saint
Published: Sunday, September 7, 1924