SOURCE: “Poor Pilgrim, Poor Stranger,” in The Saturday Review, New York, Vol. XXXVII, No. 29, July 17, 1954, pp. 9, 33-4.

In the following reminiscence, Tallant affectionately recalls March as a man and as a writer.

There was a sheet of paper in his typewriter. At the top of it he had typed the heading “Poor Pilgrim. Poor Stranger,” and beneath it he had written this paragraph:

The time comes in the life of each of us when we realize that death awaits us as it awaits others, that we will receive at the end neither preference nor exemption. It is then, in that disturbed moment, that we know life is an adventure with an ending, not a succession of bright days that go on forever. Sometimes the knowledge comes with repudiation and quick revolt that such injustice awaits us, sometimes with fear that dries the mouth and closes the eyes for...