The Emperor never spoke of his early life. The veil of mystery on this
point increased the popular curiosity concerning him, and invested him
with something of a romantic interest. There was one thing that excited
his disgust and indignation. The Bohemians of the San Francisco press
got into the practice of attaching his name to their satires and hits at
current follies, knowing that the well-known "Norton I." at the end
would insure a reading. This abuse of the liberty of the press he
denounced with dignified severity, threatening extreme measures unless
it were stopped. But nowhere on earth did the press exhibit more
audacity, or take a wider range, and it would have required a sterner
heart and a stronger hand than that of Norton I. to put a hook into its
jaws.

The end of all human grandeur, real or imaginary, comes at last. The
Emperor became thinner and more stooped as the years passed. The humor
of his hallucination retired more and more into the background, and its
pathetic side came out more strongly. His step was slow and feeble, and
there was that look in his eyes so often seen in the old and sometimes
in the young, just before the great change comes--a rapt, far-away
look, suggesting that the invisible is coming into view, the shadows
vanishing and the realities appearing. The familiar face and form were
missed on the streets, and it was known that he was dead. He had gone to
his lonely lodging, and quietly lain down and died. The newspapers spoke
of him with pity and respect, and all San Francisco took time, in the
midst of its roar-and-rush fever of perpetual excitement, to give a kind
thought to the dead man who had passed over to the life where all
delusions are laid aside, where the mystery of life shall be revealed,
and where we shall see that through all its tangled web ran the golden
thread of mercy. His life was an illusion, and the thousands who sleep
with him in Lone Mountain waiting the judgment-day were his brothers.