"I knew him when I was a child and I have sat on his knee and I can see
his face--what a face it was! and the coat he wore--it had a velvet
collar--his teeth were beautiful, and his hair--beautiful glossy hair it
was, but he was not handsome as people use that expression, he was
extraordinary, such eyes--and the most wonderful voice in the world. I'm
seventy-five years of age and he died in October '49, and I met him three
years before he died, so you see I was a pretty small child. It was at
Fordham. He'd just taken a cottage there for his wife, who was ailing with
consumption, and my aunt, Mary Pinckney, who was a friend of the Osgoods,
took me there. It must have been summer for I remember a bird hanging in a
cage in the sunshine, a bob-o'-link it was, he had caught it in the
woods.

"Dear Lord! I wonder where that summer day's gone to, and the
bob-o'-link--'pears to me we aren't even memories, for memories live and
we don't."

They were walking along, Abraham slowly following with the carriage, and
Miss Pinckney was walking in an exultant manner as though she saw nothing
about her, as though she were treading air. Phyl had unconsciously set
free a train of thought in the mind of Miss Pinckney, a train that always
led to an explosion, and this is exactly how it happened and what she
said.

"But his memory will live. Look right round you, do you see his statue?"

"No," said Phyl, sweeping the view. "Where is it?"

"Just so, where is it? It's not here, it's not in N'York, it's not in
Baltimore, it's not in Philadelphia, it's not in Boston. The one real
splendid writing man that America has produced she's ashamed to put up a
statue to. Why? Because he drank! Why, God bless my soul, Grant drank. No,
it wasn't drink, it was Griswold. The man who hated him, the man who
crucified his reputation and sold the remains for thirty pieces of silver
to a publisher, Griswold, Rufus Griswold--Judas Griswold that was his real
name, and he hid it--"

Miss Pinckney had lowered her parasol in her anger, she shut it with a
snap and then shot it up again; as she did so an automobile driven by a
girl and which was approaching them, passed, and a young man seated by the
girl raised his hat.

It was Richard Pinckney.

The girl was a very pretty brunette. This thing was too much for Miss
Pinckney in her present temper; all her anger against Griswold seemed
suddenly diverted to the automobile. She snorted.

"There goes Richard w