ith his feet wide apart in a
fashion he had, and gayly flirted his hand in the air, "that's what
Aldrich says, and he's agreed to write my biography, on condition that I
make a last dying speech when they bring me out on the plaza to do it,
'If I had taken the advice of my friend T. B. Aldrich, author of
'Marjorie Daw and Other People,' I should not now be in this place.'"

He went, and he did not come back. He was not indeed garroted as his
friends had promised, but he was probably assassinated on the steamer by
which he sailed from Santiago, for he never arrived in Havana, and was
never heard of again.

I now realize that I loved him, though I did as little to show it as men
commonly do. If I am to meet somewhere else the friends who are no
longer here, I should like to meet Ralph Keeler, and I would take some
chances of meeting in a happy place a soul which had by no means kept
itself unspotted, but which in all its consciousness of error, cheerfully
trusted that "the Almighty was not going to scoop any of us." The faith
worded so grotesquely could not have been more simply or humbly affirmed,
and no man I think could have been more helplessly sincere. He had
nothing of that false self-respect which forbids a man to own himself
wrong promptly and utterly when need is; and in fact he owned to some
things in his checkered past which would hardly allow him any sort of
self-respect. He had always an essential gaiety not to be damped by any
discipline, and a docility which expressed itself in cheerful compliance.
"Why do you use bias for opinion?" I demanded, in going over a proof with
him. "Oh, because I'm such an ass--such a bi-ass."

He had a philosophy which he liked to impress with a vivid touch on his
listener's shoulder: "Put your finger on the present moment and enjoy it.
It's the only one you've got, or ever will have." This light and joyous
creature could not but be a Pariah among our Brahmins, and I need not say
that I never met him in any of the great Cambridge houses. I am not sure
that he was a persona grata to every one in my own, for Keeler was framed
rather for men's liking, and Mr. Aldrich and I had our subtleties as to
whether his mind about women was not so Chinese as somewhat to infect his
manner. Keeler was too really modest to be of any rebellious mind
towards the society which ignored him, and of too sweet a cheerfulness to
be greatly vexed by it. He lived on in the house of a suave old actor,
wh