O’er custom’s fence, with easy vault, Leaped Walt. The pedant’s gown he would not don, Nor hold his pen with handcuffs on. His rhythm, like a fetterless sea, Broke in mad music and débris Against the bowlders of his age With giant rage. We shall not find ’neath heaven’s vault Another Walt. He gave a gift beyond all pelf, Man’s greatest gift--he gave himself. Then bear, with dead hands on his breast, This shaggy old man to his rest. A strong, audacious soul has fled, Now Walt is dead. --SAM WALTER FOSS. [Illustration: A. CONAN DOYLE] Dr. A. Conan Doyle came to this country in October, 1894, and gave forty public readings. Had it not been for his invalid wife, with whom he had promised to spend Christmas, he could have continued during the season and returned home with a small fortune in American dollars. There was something about his personality that attracted people, and still he was not what I would say the most satisfactory reader of his writings. There was something about him that fairly charmed his audiences, and many of his great admirers were seriously disappointed when they found that as soon as the lecture was over the Doctor had made his escape from the stage door, so that those friends who had rushed to meet him and congratulate him could not do so. I remember that I made a promise to a group of very prominent New York ladies, who had made a special request to meet the Doctor after his reading, that they could have the privilege of being introduced to him. While in the wings as he was stepping on the stage I told the Doctor what I had done and asked him to please wait and meet them. He replied: “Oh, Major, I cannot, I cannot. What do they want of me? Let me get away. I haven’t the courage to look anybody in the face.” He was a pessimist in regard to the satisfactoriness of his entertainment. He is a gentleman with very hot blood. He seldom wears an overcoat, even in the coldest weather. He seemed to like everybody he met and everything he saw in America excepting our heated hotel lobbies, public halls, and railway cars. When he had a matinée lecture he removed his vest and buttoned his Prince Albert coat close to his body. This he could not very well do in his evening dress. Dr. Doyle comes of a family of artists and literary men, his grandfather having been a famous caricaturist, and one of his uncles the famous Richard Doyle of the early days of London _Punch_, and another, James Doyle, the historian. He studied medicine, and at nineteen went to the Arctic regions as medical officer to a whaler. On his return to Edinburgh he continued his medical studies and there met Dr. James Bell, the eminent surgeon, the man who suggested “Sherlock Holmes,” his most famous character.