Of all the tragedies, this is perhaps the bitterest, because of the long-drawn memory of the thing. Organs continue to play it, but the sale ceases. Quarter after quarter, the royalties are less, until at last a few dollars per month will measure them completely. Meanwhile his publishers ask for other songs. One he writes, and then another, and yet another, vainly endeavoring to duplicate that original note which made for his splendid success the year before. But it will not come. And, in the meanwhile, other song-writers displace him for the time being in the public eye. His publishers have a new hit, but it is not his. A new author is being bowed to and taken out to dinner. But he is not that author. A new tile-crowned celebrity is strolling up his favorite Broadway path. At last, after a dozen attempts and failures, there is no hurry to publish his songs. If the period of failure is too long extended he may even be neglected. More and more, celebrities crowd in between him and that delightful period when he was greatest. At last, chagrined by the contrast of things, he changes his publishers, changes his haunts and, bitterest of all, his style of living. Soon it is the old grind again, and then, if thoughtless spending has been his failing, shabby clothing and want. You may see the doubles of these in any publisher’s sanctum at any time, the sarcastically referred-to _has been_. Here, also, the disengaged ballad singer, “peerless tenor” of some last year’s company, suffering a period of misfortune. He is down on his luck in everything but appearances, last year’s gorgeousness still surviving in a modified and sedate form. He is a singer of songs, now, for the publishers, by toleration. His one lounging-place in all New York where he is welcome and not looked at askance is the chair they may allow him. Once a day he makes the rounds of the theatrical agencies; once, or if fortune favors, twice a day he visits some cheap eating-house. At night, after a lone stroll through that fairyland of theaters and gaudy palaces to which, as he sees it, he properly belongs--Broadway, he returns to his bed, the carpeted floor of a room in some tolerant publisher’s office, where he sleeps by permission, perhaps, and not even there, too often. Oh, the glory of success in this little world in his eye at this time--how now, in want, it looms large and essential! Outside, as he stretches himself, may even now be heard the murmur of that shiny, joyous rout of which he was so recently a part. The lights, the laughter; the songs, the mirth--all are for others. Only he, only he must linger in shadows, alone. To-morrow it will come out in words, if you talk with him. It is in the publisher’s office, perhaps, where gaudy ladies are trying songs, or on the street, where others, passing, notice him not but go their way in elegance. “I had it once, all right,” he will tell you. “I had my handful. You bet I’ll get it next year.” Is it of money he is thinking?