“Sometimes a train is derailed, as the papers call it, and two or three people have to remain over, as we did, all night. (Luckily this happens to be an ‘open date’ for our combine.) It is at such a time the Fifth Avenue Hotel is the scene of great excitement. A large codfish, with a broad and sunny smile and his bosom full of rock salt, is tied in the creek to freshen and fit himself for the responsible position of floor manager of the codfish ball. A pale chambermaid, wearing a black jersey with large pores in it through which she is gently percolating, now goes joyously up the stairs to make the little post-office lock-box rooms look ten times worse than they ever did before. She warbles a low refrain as she nimbly knocks loose the venerable dust of centuries and sets it afloat throughout the rooms. All is bustle about the house. Especially the chambermaid. We are put up in the guest’s chamber here. It has two atrophied beds made up of pains and counterpanes. The light, joyous feeling which this remark may convey is wholly assumed on my part. “The door of our room is full of holes where locks have been wrenched off in order to let the coroner in. Last night I could imagine that I was in the act of meeting, personally, the famous people who have tried to sleep here, and who moaned through the night, and who died while waiting for the dawn. “This afternoon we pay our bills, as is our usual custom, and tear ourselves away from the Fifth Avenue Hotel. We leave at 2:30. Hoping the roads may continue to fork just the same as though we had remained, and that this will find you enjoying yourself, I am, “Yours truly, “EDGAR WILSON NYE.” * * * * * On the back of one of his letters was a peculiarly drawn sketch of an elongated hand and an extended index finger. Below was a burlesque advertisement of a certain “Postmaster-General and dealer in gents’ fine underwear,” and a variety of funny articles. He adds, “This space reserved at reasonable rates,” and then, as I was still in England, asks me to give his regards to Stanley, with a funny addenda in messages also to “Victoria and P. Wales.” I find a visiting-card left in my office about this period, on the back of which Mr. Nye had written: “10 P.M.--It is now too late to make more than three or four dollars at poker before quitting-time, so I will go home. BILL.” It must be said here that Nye was not a card-player, and this was only one of many references to things he never did. A letter from Arden, N. C. (the town where he died), was dated “Sabbath Morning, Just After Prayers.”