New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Short stories, American
I had intended to go down to the boat and see him off the next morning,
but at breakfast I received a letter from his wife saying that he had
passed a very restless night, and that she thought it would excite him
still more if I saw him again, and begging me, therefore, not to come to
the steamer if such had been my intention. And so it was that he sailed
away and I never saw him again.
In the note-book I found a check for five hundred dollars, and a list of
the things he wished me to get and to pay for. They were for his mother
mostly, but one was a seal-ring for myself. And there was with the check
a jeweler's bill, "To articles sent as directed," which I was also
requested to pay.
The note-book itself I guarded with care. It was a pocket-journal, and
my friend had tried to make it a record of his life for the preceding
year. There were entries of letters received and sent, of money earned
and spent, of acquaintances made, of business appointments, of dinner
engagements, and of visits to the doctor. Evidently his health had been
failing fast, and he had been struggling hard to keep the knowledge not
only from his mother, but even from himself. While he had set down these
outward facts of his life, he had also used the note-book as the record
of his inward feelings. To an extent that he little understood, that
journal, with its fragmentary entries and its stray thoughts, told the
story of his spiritual experience.
Many of the entries were personal, but many were not; they were merely
condensations of the thought of the moment as it passed through his
mind. Here are two specimens:
"We judge others by the facts of life--by what we hear them say and see
them do. We judge ourselves rather by our own feelings--by what we
intend and desire and hope to do some day in the future. Thus a poor man
may glow with inward satisfaction at the thought of the hospital he is
going to build when he gets rich. And a wealthy man can at least pride
himself on the fortitude with which he would, if need be, bear the
deprivations of poverty."
"To pardon is the best and the bitterest vengeance."
Toward the end of the year the business entries became fewer and fewer,
as though he had tired of keeping the record of his doings. But the
later pages were far fuller than the earlier of his reflections--sometimes
a true thought happily expressed, sometimes, more often than not
perhaps, a mere verbal antithesis, such as have furnished forth many an
aphorism long before my friend was born. And these later sentiments had
a tinge of bitterness lacking in the earlier.
"There are few houses," he wrote, in October, apparently, "where
happiness is a permanent boarder; generally it is but a transient guest;
and sometimes, indeed, it is only a tramp that knocks at the side door
and is refused admittance."
"Many a man forgets his evil deeds so swiftly that he is honestly
surprised when any one else recalls them."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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