found
next morning at his door, the little potentate all the while in his
final sleep. The whole paper is worth the most careful study; it reveals
not a little of his real nature, and unfolds very curiously the secret
of his work, the vitality and abiding power of his own creations; how he
"invented a certain Costigan, out of scraps, heel-taps, odds and ends of
characters," and met the original the other day, without surprise, in a
tavern parlor. The following is beautiful: "Years ago I had a quarrel
with a certain well-known person (I believed a statement regarding him
which his friends imparted to me, and which turned out to be quite
incorrect). To his dying day that quarrel was never quite made up. I
said to his brother, 'Why is your brother's soul still dark against me?
_It is I who ought to be angry and unforgiving, for I was in the
wrong_.'" _Odisse quem laeseris_ was never better contravened. But what
we chiefly refer to now is the profound pensiveness of the following
strain, as if written with a presentiment of what was not then very far
off:--"Another Finis written; another milestone on this journey from
birth to the next world. Sure it is a subject for solemn cogitation.
Shall we continue this story-telling business, and be voluble to the end
of our age?" "Will it not be presently time, O prattler, to hold your
tongue?" And thus he ends:--

"Oh, the sad old pages, the dull old pages; oh, the cares, the _ennui_,
the squabbles, the repetitions, the old conversations over and over
again! But now and again a kind thought is recalled, and now and again a
dear memory. Yet a few chapters more, and then the last; after which,
behold Finis itself comes to an end, and the Infinite begins."

* * * * *

He had been suffering on Sunday from an old and cruel enemy. He fixed
with his friend and surgeon to come again on Tuesday, but with that
dread of anticipated pain which is a common condition of sensibility and
genius, he put him off with a note from "yours unfaithfully, W.M.T." He
went out on Wednesday for a little, and came home at ten. He went to his
room, suffering much, but declining his man's offer to sit with him. He
hated to make others suffer. He was heard moving, as if in pain, about
twelve, on the eve of--

"That happy morn
Wherein the Son of Heaven's eternal King,
Of wedded maid and virgin-mother born,
Our great redemption from above did bring."

Then a