chy uncle of fiction and the drama. I made notes on him
from time to time with a view to building a play around him--the perfect
uncle, unobtrusive, never blustering at his nephew; translating the
avuncular relationship into something remote and chaste like a distant
view of Mount Washington in winter. As I recall, there were only two
great passions in your uncle's life--Japanese art and green-turtle soup.
It was just like him to retire from business on his sixtieth birthday
and depart for the Orient, there to commit the shameless indiscretion of
matrimony."

"Like him! It was the greatest shock of my life. To the best of my
knowledge he never knew any women except the widow of his partner in the
importing house. He used to dine with her now and then, and I caught him
once sending her flowers at Easter--probably an annual stunt. She was
about eighty and perfectly safe. He spent twenty years in the Tyringham,
the dullest and most respectable hotel in the world, and his chief
recreation was a leisurely walk in the park before going to bed. You
could set your clock by him. Pretty thin picking for a dramatist, I
should think. He used to take me to the theatre regularly every other
Thursday--it was a date--and his favorite entertainment was vaudeville
with black-face embellishment preferred. You should add that to Japanese
pottery and potage a la tortue. He joined the yacht club just because
the green turtle at that joint is the best in New York. Yachts! He never
sailed in anything but the biggest steamers, and got no fun out of that.
I crossed with him twice, and he never left his bunk. But in his shy
fashion he was kind and generous and mighty good to me."

"If you hadn't gone to war, but had kept right at his elbow, the
marriage might have been averted," suggested Searles. "He did leave you
something, didn't he?"

"Fifty thousand cash and the right to use the garage at the Barton farm.
Calling it a farm is a joke; it's rocks mostly. He bought the house to
have a place to store his prints and ceramics. He hated motoring except
in taxis up and down town, and when I urged him to set up a machine, he
told me to go ahead and buy one and build the garage. He rather sniffed
at the writing I do, but told me I'd better fix up a studio in the
garage and have it as a place to work in. His will provides that I may
lodge in the garage for life."

"The estate footed a million, as I remember, so I can't praise his
generosity. But th