VOULD BE SO JARMT'" 431
MARTY 453

THE MARTIAN

"BARTY JOSSELIN IS NO MORE...."

When so great a man dies, it is generally found that a tangled
growth of more or less contentious literature has already gathered
round his name during his lifetime. He has been so written about, so
talked about, so riddled with praise or blame, that, to those who
have never seen him in the flesh, he has become almost a tradition,
a myth--and one runs the risk of losing all clew to his real
personality.

This is especially the case with the subject of this biography--one
is in danger of forgetting what manner of man he was who has so
taught and touched and charmed and amused us, and so happily changed
for us the current of our lives.

He has been idealized as an angel, a saint, and a demigod; he has
been caricatured as a self-indulgent sensualist, a vulgar Lothario,
a buffoon, a joker of practical jokes.

He was in reality the simplest, the most affectionate, and most
good-natured of men, the very soul of honor, the best of husbands
and fathers and friends, the most fascinating companion that ever
lived, and one who kept to the last the freshness and joyous spirits
of a school-boy and the heart of a child; one who never said or did
an unkind thing; probably never even thought one. Generous and
open-handed to a fault, slow to condemn, quick to forgive, and
gifted with a power of immediately inspiring affection and keeping
it forever after, such as I have never known in any one else, he
grew to be (for all his quick-tempered impulsiveness) one of the
gentlest and meekest and most humble-minded of men!

On me, a mere prosperous tradesman, and busy politician and man of
the world, devolves the delicate and responsible task of being the
first to write the life of the greatest literary genius this century
has produced, _and of revealing the strange secret of that genius_,
which has lighted up the darkness of these latter times as with a
pillar of fire by night.

This extraordinary secret has never been revealed before to any
living soul but his wife and myself. And that is _one_ of my
qualifications for this great labor of love.

Another is that for fifty years I have known him as never a man can
quite have known his fellow-man before--that for all that time he
has been more constantly and devotedly loved by me than any man can
ever