Ah, me!  Ah, me!  That one could be so great, and that it should not last for ever and for ever!

Another of his outstanding characteristics was his love of women, a really amusing and at times ridiculous quality.  He was always sighing over the beauty, innocence, sweetness, this and that, of young maidenhood in his songs, but in real life he seemed to desire and attract quite a different type—­the young and beautiful, it is true, but also the old, the homely and the somewhat savage—­a catholicity of taste I could never quite stomach.  It was “Paul dearest” here and “Paul dearest” there, especially in his work in connection with the music-house and the stage.  In the former, popular ballad singers of both sexes, some of the women most attractive and willful, were most numerous, coming in daily from all parts of the world apparently to find songs which they could sing on the American or even the English stage.  And it was a part of his duty, as a member of the firm and the one who principally “handled” the so-called professional inquirers, to meet them and see that they were shown what the catalogue contained.  Occasionally there was an aspiring female song-writer, often mere women visitors.

Regardless, however, of whether they were young, old, attractive or repulsive, male or female, I never knew any one whose manner was more uniformly winsome or who seemed so easily to disarm or relax an indifferent or irritated mood.  He was positive sunshine, the same in quality as that of a bright spring morning.  His blue eyes focused mellowly, his lips were tendrilled with smiles.  He had a brisk, quick manner, always somehow suggestive of my mother, who was never brisk.

And how he fascinated them, the women!  Their quite shameless daring where he was concerned!  Positively, in the face of it I used to wonder what had become of all the vaunted and so-called “stabilizing morality” of the world.  None of it seemed to be in the possession of these women, especially the young and beautiful.  They were distant and freezing enough to all who did not interest them, but let a personality such as his come into view and they were all wiles, bending and alluring graces.  It was so obvious, this fascination he had for them and they for him, that at times it took on a comic look.

“Get onto the hit he’s making,” one would nudge another and remark.

“Say, some tenderness, that!” This in reference to a smile or a melting glance on the part of a female.

“Nothing like a way with the ladies.  Some baby, eh, boys?”—­this following the flick of a skirt and a backward-tossed glance perhaps, as some noticeable beauty passed out.

“No wonder he’s cheerful,” a sour and yet philosophic vaudevillian, who was mostly out of a job and hung about the place for what free meals he could obtain, once remarked to me in a heavy and morose undertone.  “If I had that many women crazy about me I’d be too.”