rtly after Christmas. The
spiraeas were in bloom, and the monthly roses; you could always find a
sweet violet or two somewhere in the yard; here and there splotches of
deep pink against gray cabin walls proved that precocious peach-trees
were in bloom. It never rained. At night it was cold enough for
fires. In the middle of the day it was hot. The wind never blew, and
every morning we had a four for tennis and every afternoon we rode in
the woods. And every night we sat in front of the fire (that didn't
smoke because of pretending) and talked until the next morning.

"He was one of those rarely gifted men who find their chiefest pleasure
not in looking backward or forward, but in what is going on at the
moment. Weeks did not have to pass before it was forced upon his
knowledge that Tuesday, the fourteenth (let us say), had been a good
Tuesday. He knew it the moment he waked at 7 A. M., and perceived the
Tuesday sunshine making patterns of bright light upon the floor. The
sunshine rejoiced him and the knowledge that even before breakfast
there was vouchsafed to him a whole hour of life. That day began with
attentions to his physical well-being. There were exercises conducted
with great vigor and rejoicing, followed by a tub, artesian cold, and a
loud and joyous singing of ballads.

"The singing over, silence reigned. But if you had listened at his
door you must have heard a pen going, swiftly and boldly. He was hard
at work, doing unto others what others had done unto him. You were a
stranger to him; some magazine had accepted a story that you had
written and published it. R. H. D. had found something to like and
admire in that story (very little perhaps), and it was his duty and
pleasure to tell you so. If he had liked the story very much he would
send you instead of a note a telegram. Or it might be that you had
drawn a picture, or, as a cub reporter, had shown golden promise in a
half column of unsigned print, R. H. D. would find you out, and find
time to praise you and help you. So it was that when he emerged from
his room at sharp eight o'clock, he was wide-awake and happy and
hungry, and whistled and double-shuffled with his feet, out of
excessive energy, and carried in his hands a whole sheaf of notes and
letters and telegrams.

"Breakfast with him was not the usual American breakfast, a sullen,
dyspeptic gathering of persons who only the night before had rejoiced
in each other's society. Wi