ies in
especial particular, do not have a separate head at all but go in a
group into the feature "Obituary Notes." Our names are set in "caps,"
and we have a brisk paragraph apiece, admirable pieces of composition,
pellucid, compact, nervous. Our stories are contained in these
dry-point-like portraits stript of all that was occasional, accidental,
ephemeral, leaving alone the essential facts, such as, for instance,
that we were, say, a civil engineer. I think it would be well for each
of us occasionally to visualise his obituary "note." This should have
the effect of clarifying our outlook. Amid the welter of existence
what is it that we are above all to do? To thine own self be true.
You are a husband, a father, and a civil engineer. That is all that
matters in the end.

But after all, all obituaries in a great city are for the elect. The
great majority of us have none at all, in print. What we were is,
indeed, graven on the hearts that knew us, and told in the places where
we have been. But in the written word we go into the feature headed
"Died," a department similar in design to that on the literary page
headed "Books Received." We are arranged alphabetically according to
the first letter of our surnames. We are set in small type with lines
following the name line indented. It is difficult for me to tell with
certainty from the printed page but I think we are set without leads.
Here again, frequently, the reader comes upon the breath of affection,
the hand of some one near to the one that is gone: "Beloved husband of
------." And he is touched by the realisation that even in the rushing
city, somewhere unseen amid the hard glitter and the gay scene, to-day
warm hearts are torn, and that simple grief throbs in and makes
perennially poignant a bromidian phrase.

As this column lengthens the paragraphs shorten, until is reached what
seems to me the most moving obituary of all, that most eloquent of the
destiny of men. "ROE. ------ Richard. 1272 West 96th St., Dec. 30,
aged 54." It is like to the most moving line, perhaps, in modern
literature. For nowhere else, I think, is there one of such simplicity
and grandeur as this from "The Old Wives' Tale": "He had once been
young, and he had grown old, and was now dead."

XXI

A TOWN CONSTITUTIONAL

There is certainly no more grotesque fallacy than that humorously
bigoted notion so generally entertained, particularly by our friends of
other na