usiness! Not even your shrinking sensitiveness could
find fault with the first look of one of them, if they had panned out
right. And you know, the Flying Scud was the biggest gamble of the
crowd, and that was your own idea. Mamie says she never could bear
to look you in the face, if that idea had been mine, she is SO
conscientious!

"Your broken-hearted

"JIM."

The last began without formality:--

"This is the end of me commercially. I give up; my nerve is gone. I
suppose I ought to be glad; for we're through the court. I don't know
as ever I knew how, and I'm sure I don't remember. If it pans out--the
wreck, I mean--we'll go to Europe, and live on the interest of our
money. No more work for me. I shake when people speak to me. I have gone
on, hoping and hoping, and working and working, and the lead has pinched
right out. I want to lie on my back in a garden and read Shakespeare and
E. P. Roe. Don't suppose it's cowardice, Loudon. I'm a sick man. Rest is
what I must have. I've worked hard all my life; I never spared myself;
every dollar I ever made, I've coined my brains for it. I've never done
a mean thing; I've lived respectable, and given to the poor. Who has a
better right to a holiday than I have? And I mean to have a year of it
straight out; and if I don't, I shall lie right down here in my tracks,
and die of worry and brain trouble. Don't mistake. That's so. If there
are any pickings at all, TRUST SPEEDY; don't let the creditors get wind
of what there is. I helped you when you were down; help me now. Don't
deceive yourself; you've got to help me right now, or never. I am
clerking, and NOT FIT TO CYPHER. Mamie's typewriting at the Phoenix
Guano Exchange, down town. The light is right out of my life. I know
you'll not like to do what I propose. Think only of this; that it's life
or death for

"JIM PINKERTON.

"P.S. Our figure was seven per cent. O, what a fall was there! Well,
well, it's past mending; I don't want to whine. But, Loudon, I do want
to live. No more ambition; all I ask is life. I have so much to make
it sweet to me! I am clerking, and USELESS AT THAT. I know I would have
fired such a clerk inside of forty minutes, in MY time. But my time's
over. I can only cling on to you. Don't fail

"JIM PINKERTON."

There was yet one more postscript, yet one more outburst of self-pity
and pathetic adjuration; and a doctor's opinion, unpromising enough,
was besides enclosed. I pass them both in silence.