The next morning his sister, Mrs. Wylie, arrived with her husband, to
spend a day with Mrs. Gaylord in New York. It chanced that they had
been away from home for several weeks and had seen none of Frederick’s
manuscript, nor any copy of it. As she read—from the original roll—his
messages of the preceding evening, she constantly exclaimed: “How
characteristic!” and his closing phrase brought tears to her eyes.
She told me, then, that along with a copious use of slang, Frederick
had preserved an odd little formality of phrase, even in his closest
personal relations—a trait not common to other members of the family.
Later, in glancing for the first time through the typewritten record of
earlier interviews, again and again she expressed astonishment at the
characteristic quality of his phraseology, which had not been mentioned
to me before. Mrs. Gaylord had spoken of her vivid consciousness of
his personality, imbuing all he said to her, and had told me, during
the earlier days of this intercourse, more or less about his habit of
thought, but it is characteristic of her to ignore minor details, and
only when Mrs. Wylie arrived did I learn anything about his habit of
speech.
“Frederick,” he announced, when we invited communication, his bold
signature stretching across the whole width of the paper. “Hello, Sis!
This is too good not to be true! Hello, Dick!” This to Mr. Wylie, whose
marriage to his sister had taken place during the last weeks of his
illness. “Welcome home to the family! We’re all in it now, for good and
all. This is the thing we’ve all needed, I almost as much as the rest of
you, but I did know that sooner or later it must come, so I could bear it
better than you could.”
It must not be understood that all these communications came as
consecutively as they are presented here. There were frequent pauses;
sometimes because of our preoccupation in conversation; sometimes,
apparently, because of difficulties of transmission not explained.
Occasionally I stopped to verify a word or a phrase, asking if it had
been correctly taken, and with increasing frequency the pencil returned
without suggestion from me, to cross out false starts. Some of the
latter, which seemed significant, will be indicated from time to time.
The following message, however, came rapidly, without pause.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account