manuscript and several “starts” turned over to me after his death proved.  One day some one who knew him and me quite well assured me that L——­, having sent out many excellent stories only to have them returned, had one day cried and then raged, cursing America for its attitude toward serious letters—­an excellent sign, I thought, good medicine for one who must eventually forsake his hope of material grandeur and find himself.  “In time, in time,” I said, “he will eat through the husks of these other things, the ‘M——­ complex,’ and do something splendid.  He can’t help it.  But this fantastic dream of grandeur, of being a popular success, will have to be lived down.”

For a time now I heard but little more save once that he was connected with a moving-picture concern, suggesting plots and making some money.  Then I saw a second series of essays in the same Western critical paper—­that of the editor who had published his book—­and some of them were excellent, very searching and sincere.  I felt that he was moving along the right line, although they earned him nothing.  Then one week, very much to my surprise, there was a very glowing and extended commentary on myself, concerning which for the time being I decided to make no comment; and a little later, perhaps three weeks, a telephone call.  Did I recall him? (!) Could he come and see me? (!) I invited him to dinner, and he came, carrying, of all things—­and for him, the ex-railroad boy—­a great armful of red roses.  This touched me.

“What’s the idea?” I inquired jovially, laughing at him.

He blushed like a girl, a little irritably too, I thought, for he found me (as perhaps he had hoped not to) examining and critical, and he may have felt that I was laughing at him, which I wasn’t.  “I wished to give them to you, and I brought ’em.  Why shouldn’t I?”

“You know you should bring them if you want me to have them, and I’m only too glad to get them, anyway.  Don’t think I’m criticizing.”

He smiled and began at once on the “old days,” as he now called them, a sad commentary on our drifting days.  Indeed he seemed able to talk of little else or fast enough or with too much enthusiasm.  He went over many things and people—­M——­; K——­, the wonderful art-director, now insane and a wreck; the group of which he and I had once been a part; his youthful and unsophisticated viewpoint at the time.  “You know,” he confessed quite frankly finally, “my mother always told me then and afterwards that I made a mistake in leaving you.  You were the better influence for me.  She was right.  I know it now.  Still, a life’s a life, and we have to work through it and ourselves somehow.”

I agreed heartily.

He told me of his wife, children, farm, his health and his difficulties.  It appeared that he was making a bare living at times, at others doing very well.  His great bane was the popular magazine, the difficulty of selling a good thing.  It was true, I said, and at midnight he left, promising to come again, inviting me to come to his place in the country at my convenience.  I promised.