w his main aspirations or great dreams
had been in the main nullified by passions, necessities, crass chance
(how well he was fitted to understand that!) he broke down and cried for
hours. Then he died.

A friend who had known much of this last period, said to me rather
satirically, "He was dealing with death in the shape of a medic. Have
you ever seen him?" The doctor, he meant. "He looks like an
advertisement for an undertaker. I do believe he was trying to discover
whether he could kill somebody by the power of suggestion, and he met
L---- in the nick of time. You know how really sensitive he was. Well,
that medic killed him, the same as you would kill a bird with a bullet.
He said 'You're already dead,' and he was."

And--oh yes--M----, his former patron. At the time of L----'s sickness
and death he was still owing him $1100 for services rendered during the
last days of that unfortunate magazine. He had never been called upon to
pay his debts, for he had sunk through one easy trapdoor of bankruptcy
only to rise out of another, smiling and with the means to continue.
Yes, he was rich again, rated A No. 1, the president of a great
corporation, and with L----'s $1100 still unpaid and now not legally
"collectible." His bank balance, established by a friend at the time,
was exactly one hundred thousand.

But Mrs. L----, anxious to find some way out of her difficulty since her
husband was lying cold, and knowing of no one else to whom to turn, had
written to him. There was no food in the house, no medicine, no way to
feed the children at the moment. That matter of $1100 now--could he
spare a little? L---- had thought--

A letter in answer was not long in arriving, and a most moving M----y
document it was. M---- had been stunned by the dreadful news, stunned.
Could it really be? Could it? His young brilliant friend? Impossible! At
the dread, pathetic news he had cried--yes he had--cried--and cried--and
cried--and then he had even cried some more. Life was so sad, so grim.
As for him, his own affairs were never in so wretched a condition. It
was unfortunate. Debts there were on every hand. They haunted him,
robbed him of his sleep. He himself scarcely knew which way to turn.
They stood in serried ranks, his debts. A slight push on the part of any
one, and he would be crushed--crushed--go down in ruin. And so, as much
as he was torn, and as much as he cried, even now, he could do nothing,
nothing, nothing. He was agonize