d, beaten to earth, but still--. Then,
having signed it, there was a P.S. or an N.B. This stated that in
looking over his affairs he had just discovered that by stinting himself
in another direction he _could_ manage to scrape together twenty-five
dollars, and this he was enclosing. Would that God had designed that he
should be better placed at this sad hour!

* * * * *

However that may be, I at once sent for the mss. and they came, a
jumbled mass in two suitcases and a portfolio; and a third suitcase, so
I was informed, containing all of a hundred mss., mostly stories, had
been lost somewhere! There had been much financial trouble of late and
more than one enforced move. Mrs. L---- had been compelled--but I will
not tell all. Suffice it to say that he had such an end as his own
realistic pen might have satirically craved.

The mss., finally sorted, tabulated and read, yielded two small volumes
of excellent tales, all unpublished, the published material being all
but uniformly worthless. There was also the attempt at a popular comedy,
previously mentioned, a sad affair, and a volume of essays, as well as a
very, very slender but charming volume of verse, in case a publisher
could ever be found for them--a most agreeable little group, showing a
pleasing sense of form and color and emotion. I arranged them as best I
could and finally--

But they are still unpublished.

* * * * *

P.S. As for the sum total of the work left by L----, its very best, it
might be said that although he was not a great psychologist, still,
owing to a certain pretentiousness of assertion at times, one might
unthinkingly suppose he was. Neither had he, as yet, any fixed theories
of art or definite style of his own, imitating as he was now de
Maupassant, now O. Henry, now Poe; but also it must be said that slowly
and surely he was approximating one, original and forceful and
water-clear in expression and naturalness. At times he veered to a
rather showy technique, at others to a cold and even harsh simplicity.
Yet always in the main he had color, beauty, emotion, poignance when
necessary. Like his idol, de Maupassant, he had no moral or strong
social prejudices, no really great or disturbing imagination, no wealth
of perplexing ideas. He saw America and life as something to be painted
as all masters see life and paint it. Gifted with a true vein of satire,
he had not, at the time