or death for

"JIM PINKERTON.

"P.S. Our figure was seven per cent. O, what a fall was there! Well,
well, it's past mending; I don't want to whine. But, Loudon, I do want
to live. No more ambition; all I ask is life. I have so much to make
it sweet to me! I am clerking, and USELESS AT THAT. I know I would have
fired such a clerk inside of forty minutes, in MY time. But my time's
over. I can only cling on to you. Don't fail

"JIM PINKERTON."

There was yet one more postscript, yet one more outburst of self-pity
and pathetic adjuration; and a doctor's opinion, unpromising enough,
was besides enclosed. I pass them both in silence. I think shame to
have shown, at so great length, the half-baked virtues of my friend
dissolving in the crucible of sickness and distress; and the effect upon
my spirits can be judged already. I got to my feet when I had done, drew
a deep breath, and stared hard at Honolulu. One moment the world seemed
at an end; the next, I was conscious of a rush of independent energy. On
Jim I could rely no longer; I must now take hold myself. I must decide
and act on my own better thoughts.

The word was easy to say; the thing, at the first blush, was
undiscoverable. I was overwhelmed with miserable, womanish pity for
my broken friend; his outcries grieved my spirit; I saw him then and
now--then, so invincible; now, brought so low--and knew neither how
to refuse, nor how to consent to his proposal. The remembrance of my
father, who had fallen in the same field unstained, the image of his