Let us read these newspaper accounts.  There is intense excitement at Chicago.  Lockwin is libeled.  The election briberies are exposed.  David Lockwin had spent nearly $200,000 to go to Congress, it is stated.

“Infamous!” cries Robert Chalmers, and vows he is glad he is out of a world so base.  He puts forth for books.

Search as he may, he cannot find the editions that have grown dear to David Lockwin.  He cannot abstain from more purchases of Chicago papers.  They are familiar—­like the books in David Lockwin’s library at Chicago.

This is a dreary life, without a friend.  He dares not to seek acquaintances.  Not a soul, not even a restaurant keeper, has ventured to be familiar.  The man with a broken nose and missing teeth—­the man with a grotesque voice—­is scarcely desired as a customer at select places on the avenues and Broadway.  Let him find better accommodations among the Frenchmen and Italians on Sixth avenue.

“Probably,” they say, “he has fallen in a duel.”

But there are fits of melancholia.  Return, Robert Chalmers, to your handsome apartments.  Draw down your folding-bed, turn on the heat, study those Chicago papers.  Live once again!  What is this?  A reaction at Chicago.  Why, here is a page of panegyric.  Here is a large portrait of the late Hon. David Lockwin, lost in Georgian Bay!

The man whisks off his bed, and runs it up to the wall, whereupon he may confront a handsome mirror.  He compares the two faces.

“A change.  A change, indeed!” he exclaims sadly.  It is not alone in the features.  The new man is growing meager.  He is an inconsequential person.  He is a character to be kept waiting in an ante-room while strutting personages walk into the desired presence.

He pulls the bed down.  He cannot lie on it now.  He takes a chair and greedily reads the apotheosis of David Lockwin.

As he reads he is seized with a surprising feeling.  In all this eulogium he sees the hand of Esther Lockwin.  Without her aid this great biography could not have been collated.

The sweat stands on his brow.  He studies the type, to learn those confessions that the publishers make, one to another, but not to the world.

“It is paid for,” he groans.  He is wounded and unhappy.

“It is her cursed pride,” he says.  “I’m glad I’m out of it all.”

He sits, week after week, hands deep in pockets, his legs stretched out, one ankle over the other, his chin far down on his chest.

“Funny man in the east parlor!” says the chambermaid.

“Isn’t he ugly!” says her fellow-chambermaid.

But after this long discontent, Robert Chalmers finds that Chicago mourns for him.  He is flattered.  “I earned it!” he cries, and goes in search of the books that once eased him—­the identical copies.

The movement for a cenotaph makes him smile.  On the whole, he is glad men are so sentimental about monuments.  He is glad, however, that no monument will be erected.