it. He
had been a teacher and a student, and was a trained mathematician.
There could be no flaw in his calculations. He had worked them out
again and again. The energy developed by his plan was great enough to
float a ship capable of carrying almost any burden, and of directing
it against the strongest head winds. Now, upon the threshold of
success, he was awaiting merely the long-delayed pension to carry his
dream into life. To-morrow would bring it, and with it an end to all
his waiting and suffering.
One after another the lights went out in the tenement. Only the one in
the inventor's room burned steadily through the night. The policeman
on the beat noticed the lighted window, and made a mental note of the
fact that some one was sick. Once during the early hours he stopped
short to listen. Upon the morning breeze was borne a muffled sound, as
of a distant explosion. But all was quiet again, and he went on,
thinking that his senses had deceived him. The dawn came in the
eastern sky, and with it the stir that attends the awakening of
another day. The lamp burned steadily yet behind the dim window pane.
The milkmen came, and the push-cart criers. The policeman was
relieved, and another took his place. Lastly came the mail-carrier
with a large official envelope marked, "Pension Bureau, Washington."
He shouted up the stairway:--
"Krueger! Letter!"
The landlord came to the door and was glad. So it had come, had it?
"Run, Emma," he said to his little daughter, "run and tell Mr. Godfrey
his letter has come."
The child skipped up the steps gleefully. She knocked at the
inventor's door, but no answer came. It was not locked, and she pushed
it open. The little lamp smoked yet on the table. The room was strewn
with broken models and torn papers that littered the floor. Something
there frightened the child. She held to the banisters and called
faintly:--
"Papa! Oh, papa!"
They went in together on tiptoe without knowing why, the postman with
the big official letter in his hand. The morrow had kept its promise.
Of hunger and want there was an end. On the bed, stretched at full
length, with his Grand Army hat flung beside him, lay the inventor,
dead. A little round hole in the temple, from which a few drops of
blood had flowed, told what remained of his story. In the night
disillusion had come, with failure.
THE CAT TOOK THE KOSHER MEAT
The tenement No. 76 Madison Street had been for some time scand
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