bear to look you in the face if
that idea had been mine, she is so conscientious!

"Your broken-hearted

"JIM."

The last began without formality:--

"This is the end of me commercially. I give up; my nerve has gone. I
suppose I ought to be glad, for we're through the court. I don't know
as ever I knew how, and I'm sure I don't remember. If it pans
out--the wreck, I mean--we'll go to Europe and live on the interest
of our money. No more work for me. I shake when people speak to me. I
have gone on, hoping and hoping and working and working, and the lead
has pinched right out. I want to lie on my back in a garden and read
Shakespeare and E.P. Roe. Don't suppose it's cowardice, Loudon. I'm a
sick man. Rest is what I must have. I've worked hard all my life; I
never spared myself, every dollar I ever made I've coined my brains
for it. I've never done a mean thing; I've lived respectable, and
given to the poor. Who has a better right to a holiday than I have?
And I mean to have a year of it straight out, and if I don't I shall
lie right down here in my tracks, and die of worry and brain trouble.
Don't mistake, that's so. If there are any pickings at all, _trust
Speedy_; don't let the creditors get wind of what there is. I helped
you when you were down, help me now. Don't deceive yourself; you've
got to help me right now or never. I am clerking, and _not fit to
cipher_. Mamie's typewriting at the Phoenix Guano Exchange, down
town. The light is right out of my life. I know you'll not like to do
what I propose. Think only of this, that it's life or death for

"JIM PINKERTON."

"_P.S._--Our figure was seven per cent. O, what a fall was there!
Well, well, it's past mending; I don't want to whine. But, Loudon, I
don't want to live. No more ambition; all I ask is life. I have so
much to make it sweet to me. I am clerking, and _useless at that_. I
know I would have fired such a clerk inside of forty minutes in _my_
time. But _my_ time's over. I can only cling on to you. Don't fail

"JIM PINKERTON."

There was yet one more postscript, yet one more outburst of self-pity
and pathetic adjuration; and a doctor's opinion, unpromising enough,
was besides enclosed. I pass them both in silence. I think shame to have
shown at so great length the half-baked virtues of my friend dissolving
in the crucible of sickness and distress; an