, a little anxiously.

"No."

"Nor see it?"

"No."

He sighed, a trifle sadly, as if I had rejected the only favor he could
bestow. I saw at once that he had been under frequent exhibition to
the doctors, and that he was, perhaps, a trifle vain of this attention.
This perception was corroborated a moment later by his producing a copy
of a medical magazine, with a remark that on the sixth page I would
find a full statement of his case.

"Could I serve him in any way?" I asked.

It appeared that I could. If I could help him to any light employment,
something that did not require any great physical exertion or mental
excitement, he would be thankful. But he wanted me to understand that
he was not, strictly speaking, a poor man; that some years before the
discovery of his fatal complaint he had taken out a life insurance
policy for five thousand dollars, and that he had raked and scraped
enough together to pay it up, and that he would not leave his wife and
four children destitute. "You see," he added, "if I could find some
sort of light work to do, and kinder sled along, you know--until--"

He stopped, awkwardly.

I have heard several noted actors thrill their audiences with a single
phrase. I think I never was as honestly moved by any spoken word as
that "until," or the pause that followed it. He was evidently quite
unconscious of its effect, for as I took a seat beside him on the sofa,
and looked more closely in his waxen face, I could see that he was
evidently embarrassed, and would have explained himself further, if I
had not stopped him.

Possibly it was the dramatic idea, or possibly chance; but a few days
afterward, meeting a certain kind-hearted theatrical manager, I asked
him if he had any light employment for a man who was an invalid? "Can
he walk?" "Yes." "Stand up for fifteen minutes?" "Yes." "Then I'll
take him. He'll do for the last scene in the 'Destruction of
Sennacherib'--it's a tremendous thing, you know. We'll have two
thousand people on the stage." I was a trifle alarmed at the title,
and ventured to suggest (without betraying my poor friend's secret)
that he could not actively engage in the "Destruction of Sennacherib,"
and that even the spectacle of it might be too much for him. "Needn't
see it at all," said my managerial friend; "put him in front, nothing
to do but march in and march out, and dodge curtain."

He was engaged. I admit I was at times haunted by grave doubts as