e, and suddenly began to sing a
travesty of an old hymn:

"How tedious are they
Who their sovereign obey,"

and so loudly that I said:

"Aren't you afraid he'll hear you and come back?" Whereupon he pretended
alarm and sang under his breath, and for the rest of the evening was in
boundless good-humor.

I have recalled this incident merely as a sample of things that were
likely to happen at any time in his company, and to show the difficulty
one might find in fitting himself to his varying moods. He was not to be
learned in a day, or a week, or a month; some of those who knew him
longest did not learn him at all.

We celebrated his seventy-first birthday by playing billiards all day. He
invented a new game for the occasion; inventing rules for it with almost
every shot.

It happened that no member of the family was at home on this birthday.
Ill health had banished every one, even the secretary. Flowers,
telegrams, and congratulations came, and there was a string of callers;
but he saw no one beyond some intimate friends--the Gilders--late in the
afternoon. When they had gone we went down to dinner. We were entirely
alone, and I felt the great honor of being his only guest on such an
occasion. Once between the courses, when he rose, as usual, to walk
about, he wandered into the drawing-room, and seating himself at the
orchestrelle began to play the beautiful flower-song from "Faust." It
was a thing I had not seen him do before, and I never saw him do it
again. When he came back to the table he said:

"Speaking of companions of the long ago, after fifty years they become
only shadows and might as well be in the grave. Only those whom one has
really loved mean anything at all. Of my playmates I recall John Briggs,
John Garth, and Laura Hawkins--just those three; the rest I buried long
ago, and memory cannot even find their graves."

He was in his loveliest humor all that day and evening; and that night,
when he stopped playing, he said:

"I have never had a pleasanter day at this game."

I answered, "I hope ten years from to-night we shall still be playing
it."

"Yes," he said, "still playing the best game on earth."

CCL

PHILOSOPHY AND PESSIMISM

In a letter to MacAlister, written at this time, he said:

The doctors banished Jean to the country 5 weeks ago; they banished
my secretary to the country for a fortnight last Saturday; they
banished Clara to the country