I would go in and tell
him how splendidly the new boots fitted. But when I came to where his
shop had been, his name was gone. Still there, in the window, were the
slim pumps, the patent leathers with cloth tops, the sooty riding boots.

I went in, very much disturbed. In the two little shops--again made into
one--was a young man with an English face.

"Mr. Gessler in?" I said.

He gave me a strange, ingratiating look.

"No, sir," he said, "no. But we can attend to anything with pleasure.
We've taken the shop over. You've seen our name, no doubt, next door.
We make for some very good people."

"Yes, Yes," I said; "but Mr. Gessler?"

"Oh!" he answered; "dead."

"Dead! But I only received these boots from him last Wednesday week."

"Ah!" he said; "a shockin' go. Poor old man starved 'imself."

"Good God!"

"Slow starvation, the doctor called it! You see he went to work in such
a way! Would keep the shop on; wouldn't have a soul touch his boots
except himself. When he got an order, it took him such a time. People
won't wait. He lost everybody. And there he'd sit, goin' on and on--I
will say that for him not a man in London made a better boot! But look
at the competition! He never advertised! Would 'ave the best leather,
too, and do it all 'imself. Well, there it is. What could you expect
with his ideas?"

"But starvation----!"

"That may be a bit flowery, as the sayin' is--but I know myself he was
sittin' over his boots day and night, to the very last. You see I used
to watch him. Never gave 'imself time to eat; never had a penny in the
house. All went in rent and leather. How he lived so long I don't know.
He regular let his fire go out. He was a character. But he made good
boots."

"Yes," I said, "he made good boots."

And I turned and went out quickly, for I did not want that youth to know
that I could hardly see.
1911

THE GRAND JURY--IN TWO PANELS AND A FRAME

Read that piece of paper, which summoned me to sit on the Grand Jury at
the approaching Sessions, lying in a scoop of the shore close to the
great rollers of the sea--that span of eternal freedom, deprived just
there of too great liberty by the word "Atlantic." And I remember
thinking, as I read, that in each breaking wave was some particle which
had visited every shore in all the world--that in each sparkle of hot
sunlight stealing that bright water up into the sky, was the microcosm of
all change, and of all u