that they had done him an injustice, remained religiously away.  He found, as he often told my sister, broken horse-shoes (a “bad sign"), met cross-eyed women, another “bad sign,” was pursued apparently by the inimical number thirteen—­and all these little straws depressed him horribly.  Finally, being no longer strong enough to be about, he took to his bed and remained there days at a time, feeling well while in bed but weak when up.  For a little while he would go “downtown” to see this, that and the other person, but would soon return.  One day on coming back home he found one of his hats lying on his bed, accidentally put there by one of the children, and according to my sister, who was present at the time, he was all but petrified by the sight of it.  To him it was the death-sign.  Some one had told him so not long before!!!

Then, not incuriously, seeing the affectional tie that had always held us, he wanted to see me every day.  He had a desire to talk to me about his early life, the romance of it—­maybe I could write a story some time, tell something about him! (Best of brothers, here it is, a thin little flower to lay at your feet!) To please him I made notes, although I knew most of it.  On these occasions he was always his old self, full of ridiculous stories, quips and slight mots, all in his old and best vein.  He would soon be himself, he now insisted.

Then one evening in late November, before I had time to call upon him (I lived about a mile away), a hurry-call came from E——.  He had suddenly died at five in the afternoon; a blood-vessel had burst in the head.  When I arrived he was already cold in death, his soft hands folded over his chest, his face turned to one side on the pillow, that indescribable sweetness of expression about the eyes and mouth—­the empty shell of the beetle.  There were tears, a band of reporters from the papers, the next day obituary news articles, and after that a host of friends and flowers, flowers, flowers.  It is amazing what satisfaction the average mind takes in standardized floral forms—­broken columns and gates ajar!

Being ostensibly a Catholic, a Catholic sister-in-law and other relatives insistently arranged for a solemn high requiem mass at the church of one of his favorite rectors.  All Broadway was there, more flowers, his latest song read from the altar.  Then there was a carriage procession to a distant Catholic graveyard somewhere, his friend, the rector of the church, officiating at the grave.  It was so cold and dreary there, horrible.  Later on he was removed to Chicago.

But still I think of him as not there or anywhere in the realm of space, but on Broadway between Twenty-ninth and Forty-second Streets, the spring and summer time at hand, the doors of the grills and bars of the hotels open, the rout of actors and actresses ambling to and fro, his own delicious presence dressed in his best, his “funny” stories, his songs being ground out by the hand organs, his friends extending their hands, clapping him on the shoulder, cackling over the latest idle yarn.