an the lives of most men's wives are theirs. For his own
life I believe he would never have much cared, if I may trust a saying of
one who was so absolutely without pose as he was. He said that he never
saw a dead man whom he did not envy for having had it over and being done
with it. Life had always amused him, and in the resurgence of its
interests after his sorrow had ebbed away he was again deeply interested
in the world and in the human race, which, though damned, abounded in
subjects of curious inquiry. When the time came for his wife's removal
from York Harbor I went with him to Boston, where he wished to look up
the best means of her conveyance to New York. The inquiry absorbed him:
the sort of invalid car he could get; how she could be carried to the
village station; how the car could be detached from the eastern train at
Boston and carried round to the southern train on the other side of the
city, and then how it could be attached to the Hudson River train at New
York and left at Riverdale. There was no particular of the business
which he did not scrutinize and master, not only with his poignant
concern for her welfare, but with his strong curiosity as to how these
unusual things were done with the usual means. With the inertness that
grows upon an aging man he had been used to delegating more and more
things, but of that thing I perceived that he would not delegate the
least detail.

He had meant never to go abroad again, but when it came time to go he did
not look forward to returning; he expected to live in Florence always
after that; they were used to the life and they had been happy there some
years earlier before he went with his wife for the cure of Nauheim. But
when he came home again it was for good and all. It was natural that he
should wish to live in New York, where they had already had a pleasant
year in Tenth Street. I used to see him there in an upper room, looking
south over a quiet open space of back yards where we fought our battles
in behalf of the Filipinos and the Boers, and he carried on his campaign
against the missionaries in China. He had not yet formed his habit of
lying for whole days in bed and reading and writing there, yet he was a
good deal in bed, from weakness, I suppose, and for the mere comfort of
it.

My perspectives are not very clear, and in the foreshortening of events
which always takes place in our review of the past I may not always time
things aright. But I believe i