en
impressed upon me that it was a passage into the Great Realities.

"Doctor," he said, smiling, and holding my hand; "I had hoped to be with
you in your office again, as in the old days--not as a business
arrangement, but just to be with you, and revive old memories, and to
live the old life over again. But that cannot be, and I must wait till
we meet in the world of spirits, whither I go before you. It seems to be
growing dark. I cannot see your face hold my hand. I am going--going. I
am on the waves--on the waves--." The radiance was still upon his
face, but the hand I held no longer clasped mine-the wasted form was
still. It was the end. He was launched upon the Infinite Sea for the
endless voyage.

The Emperor Norton.

That was his title. He wore it with an air that was a strange mixture of
the mock-heroic and the pathetic. He was mad on this one point, and
strangely shrewd and well-informed on almost every other. Arrayed in a
faded-blue uniform, with brass buttons and epaulettes, wearing a
cocked-hat with an eagle's feather, and at times with a rusty sword at
his side, he was a conspicuous figure in the streets of San Francisco,
and a regular habitue of all its public places. In person he was stout,
full-chested, though slightly stooped, with a large head heavily coated
with bushy black hair, an aquiline nose, and dark gray eyes, whose mild
expression added to the benignity of his face. On the end of his nose
grew a tuft of long hairs, which he seemed to prize as a natural mark of
royalty, or chieftainship. Indeed, there was a popular legend afloat
that he was of true royal blood--a stray Bourbon, or something of the
sort. His speech was singularly fluent and elegant. The Emperor was one
of the celebrities that no visitor failed to see. It is said that his
mind was unhinged by a sudden loss of fortune in the early days, by the
treachery of a partner in trade. The sudden blow was deadly, and the
quiet, thrifty, affable man of business became a wreck. By nothing is
the inmost quality of a man made more manifest than by the manner in
which he meets misfortune. One, when the sky darkens, having strong
impulse and weak will, rushes into suicide; another, with a large vein
of cowardice, seeks to drown the sense of disaster in strong drink; yet
another, tortured in every fiber of a sensitive organization, flees from
the scene of his troubles and the faces of those that know him,
preferring exile to shame. The tru