"Well," I said, "you are really a very aggravating person. If I could not have got my book published elsewhere, I would certainly have had a row--I would have taken out my money's worth in vituperation." Willett smiled; "I dare say you would have had some fun," he said, "but that is not my line. I have told you before that I can't interest people--I don't think it is wholly my fault." We sate late, talking; and for the only time in his life he spoke to me, with a depth of emotion of which I should hardly have suspected him, of the value he set upon my friendship, and his gratitude for my sympathy. And now this morning I have heard of his sudden death. He was found dead in his room, bent over his papers. He must have been writing late at night, as his custom was; and it proved on examination that he must have long suffered from an unsuspected disease of the heart. Perhaps that may explain his failure, if it can be called a failure. There is something to me almost insupportably pathetic to think of his lonely and uncomforted life, his isolation, his sensitiveness. And yet I do not feel sure that it is pathetic, because his life somehow seems to me to have been one of the most beautiful I have ever known. He did nothing much for others, he achieved nothing for himself; but it is only our miserable habit of weighing every one's life, in a hard way, by a standard of performance and success, which makes one sigh over Francis Willett's life. It is very difficult at times to see what it is that life is exactly meant to do for us. Most of the men and women I know--I say this sadly but frankly--seem to me to leave the world worse, in essential respects, than they entered it. There is generally something ingenuous, responsive, eager, sweet, hopeful about a child--but though I admit that one does encounter beautiful natures that seem to flower very generously in the light of experience, yet most people grow dull, dreary, conventional, grasping, commonplace--they grow to think rather contemptuously of emotion and generosity--they think it weak to be amiable, unselfish, kind. They become fond of comfort and position and respect and money. They think such things the serious concerns of life, and sentiment a kind of relaxation. But with Willett it was the precise reverse. He claimed nothing for himself, he never profited at the expense of another; he was utterly humble, gentle, unpretentious, kind, sincere. An hour ago I should have called him "poor fellow," and wished that he had had a more robust kind of fibre; now that I know he is dead, I cannot find it in my heart to wish him any such qualities. His life appears to me utterly beautiful and fragrant. He never incurred any taint of grossness from prosperity or success; he never grew indifferent or hard; and in the light of his last passage, such a failure seems the one thing worth achieving, and to carry with it a hope all alive and rich with possibilities of blessing and glory.