"'I have no explanation to offer for my silence, more than a feeling which possessed me shortly after my arrival here--a desire to be considered a dead one, and am doing all but the one thing that will make my wish a reality. I am long tired of the game, and only continue to play because of the hardships my taking off would cause those who at present are not able to care for themselves. A way out of it would be to take them along, but I think if the matter were put before them, they would decline my proffered service; and take a chance as half-orphans. You calling up our boyhood days in "Little Hell" makes me question still further if I have any right to deny those dear to me the delights that only the young can feel and enjoy. I made a great mistake in coming to this Ohio town. The chase for dollars which I am performing here seven days every week is very disgusting to me, and every day only adds to the pangs. I am out all day selling goods, pleading for trade and collecting for former weeks' business; and in the evening I must do the necessary office work. Every day is the same, except Sunday, when I make up the book-keeping for the whole week and prepare statements and the like, to begin the usual round on Monday morning. It is a hell of a life and I wish it were done. I have some consolation in being able to call up at will those that I love. I have many a waking dream, while tramping the hills, about the comrades that have added to the joys of my former existence. Let me hear from you occasionally, because a letter from you seems to revive some of the old feeling that formerly made life passable.' * * * * * "I suppose I shall recover in time from Jim's death. I wish I could have been with him when he died. During his last half-unconscious moments the nurse proposed to send for a priest. Jim's soul must have made a last effort, for raising himself erect, he flung these words: 'I hire no spiritual nurse,' and then asked his daughter of fourteen to bring him a volume of Emerson and read to him. When she returned with the book, he was gone. "Of course, the doctor and all the wise ones have diagnosed Jim's case. But I think he sized up his case in that letter I sent you. He died of that great loneliness of soul which made of his wasted body a battered barricade against the stupidity which finally engulphed him. The soul of social and individual honour and commercial integrity, he had the misfortune to find few like himself. He yearned for the ideal; and I am sure he went down with that hope for humanity. Let us trust that there is an ever increasing number of human beings who have Jim's malady--'seekers after something in this world, that is there in no satisfying measure, or not at all.' If this letter seems boisterously blue, remember it is only the sullen marching of the black sap preceding the unfurling of the emerald banners of spring, when all things break into a 'shrill green.'" FOOTNOTES: