ips an unkind word concerning any
human being. Even his partisan editorials were free from the least tinge
of asperity--and this is a supreme test of a sweet and courteous
nature. In our talks he studiously evaded the one subject most
interesting to me. With gentle and delicate skill he parried all my
attempts to introduce the subject of religion in our conversations.

"I can't agree with you on that subject, and we will let it pass" he
would say, with a smile, and then he would start some other topic, and
rattle on delightfully in his easy, rapid way.

He could not stay long at a place, being a confirmed wanderer. He left
Sonora, and I lost sight of him. Retaining. a very kindly feeling for
this gentle-spirited and pleasant adventurer, I was loth thus to lose
all trace of him. Meeting a friend one day, on J Street, in the city of
Sacramento, he said:

"Your old friend D--is at the Golden Eagle hotel. You ought to go and
see him."

I went at once. Ascending to the third story, I found his room, and,
knocking at the door, a feeble voice bade me enter. I was shocked at the
spectacle that met my gaze. Propped in an armchair in the middle of the
room, wasted to a skeleton, and of a ghastly pallor, sat the unhappy
man. His eyes gleamed with an unnatural brightness, and his features
wore a look of intense suffering.

"You have come too late, sir," he said, before I had time to say a word.
"You can do me no good now. I have been sitting in this chair three
weeks. I could not live a minute in any other position, Hell could not
be worse than the tortures I have suffered! I thank you for coming to
see me, but you can do me no good--none, none!"

He paused, panting for breath; and then he continued, in a soliloquizing
way:

"I played the fool, making a joke of what was no joking matter. It is
too late. I can neither think nor pray, if praying would do any good. I
can only suffer, suffer, suffer!"

The painful interview soon ended. To every cheerful or hopeful
suggestion which I made he gave but the one reply:

"Too late!"

The unspeakable anguish of his look, as his eyes followed me to the
door, haunted me for many a day, and the echo of his words, "Too late!"
lingered sadly upon my ear. When I saw the announcement of his death, a
few days afterward, I asked myself the solemn question, Whether I had
dealt faithfully with this lighthearted, gifted man when he was within
my reach. His last rook is before me now, as I pe