Two more years drug on, with about two letters from Vida, and then I get a terrible one announcing the grand crash.  First, the boarding house had died a lingering death, what from Vida buying the best the market afforded and not having learned to say “No!” to parties that got behind, and Clyde having had to lend a couple hundred dollars to a fraternity brother that was having a little hard luck.  She’d run the business on a narrow trail for the last two months, trying to guard every penny, but it got so she and Clyde actually had to worry over his next club dues, to say nothing of a new dress suit he was badly needing.  Then some parties she owed bills to come along and pushed her over the cliff by taking her furniture.  She was at first dreadfully worried about how her boy would stand the blow, but he’d took it like the brave, staunch man he was, being such a help to her when they had to move to a furnished room near the old home where they both had been so happy.  He’d fairly made the place ring with his musical laughter and his merry jesting about their hardships.

Then she’d got a good job as cashier in a big grocery she’d dealt with, not getting a million dollars a year, to be sure, but they were doing nicely, because Clyde took most of his meals with his thoughtful friends—­and then crash out of a clear sky a horrible tragedy happened that for a minute darkened the whole world.

Yes, it was a bitter tragedy.  Clyde’s two-year-old dress suit, that he was bravely wearing without a murmur, had needed pressing and she promised to do it; but she overslept herself till seven-thirty that morning, which made her late at the store, so she’d asked the girl in this rooming house to do it down in the kitchen.  The girl had been willing but weak-minded.  She started with too hot an iron and didn’t put a damp cloth between the iron and the goods.  In the midst of the job something boiled over on the stove.  She got rattled and jumped for that, and when she come back the dress coat of darling Clyde was branded for fair in the middle of the back—­a nifty flatiron brand that you could of picked him out of a bunch of animals by in one second.  The girl was scared stiff and hung the clothes back in the closet without a word.  And poor Clyde discovered the outrage that night when he was dressing for a class reunion of his dear old Alvah Mater.

I had to read between the lines some, but I gathered that he now broke down completely at this betrayal of his trusting nature.  Vida must of been suffering too keenly herself to write me all the pitiful details.  And right on top of this blow comes the horrible discovery, when he takes his mandolin out of the case, that it has been fatally injured in the moving.  One blow right on another.  How little we realize the suffering that goes on all about us in this hard world.  Imagine the agony in that furnished room this night!

Clyde wasn’t made of iron.  When the first flood of grief subsided he seems to of got cold and desperate.  Said Vida in this letter:  “My heart stopped when he suddenly declared in cool, terrible tones:  ’There’s always the river!’ I could see that he had resolved to end it all, and through the night I pleaded with my boy.”