certain circumstances could retain so
comparatively placid a vein is one of those marvels which find their
explanation in the inherent trustfulness of the spirit of youth. It is
not often that the minds of men retain the perceptions of their
younger days. The marvel is not that one should thus retain, but that
any should ever lose them Go the world over, and after you have put
away the wonder and tenderness of youth what is there left? The few
sprigs of green that sometimes invade the barrenness of your
materialism, the few glimpses of summer which flash past the eye of
the wintry soul, the half hours off during the long tedium of
burrowing, these reveal to the hardened earth-seeker the universe
which the youthful mind has with it always. No fear and no favor; the
open fields and the light upon the hills; morning, noon, night; stars,
the bird-calls, the water's purl--these are the natural
inheritance of the mind of the child. Men call it poetic, those who
are hardened fanciful. In the days of their youth it was natural, but
the receptiveness of youth has departed, and they cannot see.

How this worked out in her personal actions was to be seen only in
a slightly accentuated wistfulness, a touch of which was in every
task. Sometimes she would wonder that no letter came, but at the same
time she would recall the fact that he had specified a few weeks, and
hence the six that actually elapsed did not seem so long.

In the meanwhile the distinguished ex-Senator had gone
light-heartedly to his conference with the President, he had joined in
a pleasant round of social calls, and he was about to pay a short
country visit to some friends in Maryland, when he was seized with a
slight attack of fever, which confined him to his room for a few days.
He felt a little irritated that he should be laid up just at this
time, but never suspected that there was anything serious in his
indisposition. Then the doctor discovered that he was suffering from a
virulent form of typhoid, the ravages of which took away his senses
for a time and left him very weak. He was thought to be convalescing,
however, when just six weeks after he had last parted with Jennie, he
was seized with a sudden attack of heart failure and never regained
consciousness. Jennie remained blissfully ignorant of his illness and
did not even see the heavy-typed headlines of the announcement of his
death until Bass came home that evening.

"Look here, Jennie," he said exci