“Good heavens!” I jested.  “You’d think you’d done the man an inestimable service, getting him in the penitentiary for life!”

“That’s right,” he grinned—­an unbelievably provoking smile.  “He’d better be dead, wouldn’t he?  Well, I’ll write and ask him which he’d rather have.”

I recall again taking him to task for going to the rescue of a “down and out” actor who had been highly successful and apparently not very sympathetic in his day, one of that more or less gaudy clan that wastes its substance, or so it seemed to me then, in riotous living.  But now being old and entirely discarded and forgotten, he was in need of sympathy and aid.  By some chance he knew Paul, or Paul had known him, and now because of the former’s obvious prosperity—­he was much in the papers at the time—­he had appealed to him.  The man lived with a sister in a wretched little town far out on Long Island.  On receiving his appeal Paul seemed to wish to investigate for himself, possibly to indulge in a little lofty romance or sentiment.  At any rate he wanted me to go along for the sake of companionship, so one dreary November afternoon we went, saw the pantaloon, who did not impress me very much even in his age and misery for he still had a few of his theatrical manners and insincerities, and as we were coming away I said, “Paul, why should you be the goat in every case?” for I had noted ever since I had been in New York, which was several years then, that he was a victim of many such importunities.  If it was not the widow of a deceased friend who needed a ton of coal or a sack of flour, or the reckless, headstrong boy of parents too poor to save him from a term in jail or the reformatory and who asked for fine-money or an appeal to higher powers for clemency, or a wastrel actor or actress “down and out” and unable to “get back to New York” and requiring his or her railroad fare wired prepaid, it was the dead wastrel actor or actress who needed a coffin and a decent form of burial.

“Well, you know how it is, Thee” (he nearly always addressed me thus), “when you’re old and sick.  As long as you’re up and around and have money, everybody’s your friend.  But once you’re down and out no one wants to see you any more—­see?” Almost amusingly he was always sad over those who had once been prosperous but who were now old and forgotten.  Some of his silliest tender songs conveyed as much.

“Quite so,” I complained, rather brashly, I suppose, “but why didn’t he save a little money when he had it?  He made as much as you’ll ever make.”  The man had been a star.  “He had plenty of it, didn’t he?  Why should he come to you?”

“Well, you know how it is, Thee,” he explained in the kindliest and most apologetic way.  “When you’re young and healthy like that you don’t think.  I know how it is; I’m that way myself.  We all have a little of it in us.  I have; you have.  And anyhow youth’s the time to spend money if you’re to get any good of it, isn’t it?  Of course when you’re old you can’t expect much, but still I always feel as though I’d like to help some of these old people.”  His eyes at such times always seemed more like those of a mother contemplating a sick or injured child than those of a man contemplating life.