ry--for joy principally. In three more months it was
everywhere, in the papers, on the stage, on the street-organs, played by
orchestras, bands, whistled and sung in the streets. One day on Broadway
near the Marlborough I met my brother, gold-headed cane, silk shirt, a
smart summer suit, a gay straw hat.

"Ah," I said, rather sarcastically, for I still felt peeved that he had
shown so little interest in my affairs at the time I was leaving. "On
the banks, I see."

"On the banks," he replied cordially. "You turned the trick for me,
Thee, that time. What are you doing now? Why don't you ever come and see
me? I'm still your brother, you know. A part of that is really yours."

"Cut that!" I replied most savagely. "I couldn't write a song like that
in a million years. You know I couldn't. The words are nothing."

"Oh, all right. It's true, though, you know. Where do you keep yourself?
Why don't you come and see me? Why be down on me? I live here, you
know." He looked up at the then brisk and successful hotel.

"Well, maybe I will some time," I said distantly, but with no particular
desire to mend matters, and we parted.

There was, however, several years later, a sequel to all this and one so
characteristic of him that it has always remained in my mind as one of
the really beautiful things of life, and I might as well tell it here
and now. About five years later I had become so disappointed in
connection with my work and the unfriendly pressure of life that I had
suffered what subsequently appeared to have been a purely psychic
breakdown or relapse, not physical, but one which left me in no mood or
condition to go on with my work, or any work indeed in any form. Hope
had disappeared in a sad haze. I could apparently succeed in nothing, do
nothing mentally that was worth while. At the same time I had all but
retired from the world, living on less and less until finally I had
descended into those depths where I was in the grip of actual want, with
no place to which my pride would let me turn. I had always been too vain
and self-centered. Apparently there was but one door, and I was very
close to it. To match my purse I had retired to a still sorrier
neighborhood in B----, one of the poorest. I desired most of all to be
let alone, to be to myself. Still I could not be, for occasionally I
met people, and certain prospects and necessities drove me to various
publishing houses. One day as I was walking in some street near Bro