it has heard him. Flung into life without a friend, governed only by
the will of a race born to command, he has struggled through sneers and
sarcasm to eminence. Men fear him now, women flatter, nearly all envy;
yet he is alone. He knows this; he knows that in all the laughing groups
who enjoy this wine-drinking and turkey-eating day his name has not been
mentioned once. Nature allows no trifling with her laws; flowers do not
bloom in deserts. He has crushed sentiment; he has stifled affection.
With a heart by nature kindly, he sits now an image cut in steel. He
gazes calmly at his desolate hearth, at his joyless age, and smokes. Man
has no power to move him; fate condemned him to be a statue.

Ah! the strongest, after all, are but weak, erring, human beings. The
last of a race stands weary and old, trembling on the brink of eternity.
Who will close the fading eye? Who will smooth the dying pillow? With
all his great wealth, with all his wondrous knowledge, what one deed of
charity will that infirm old man take into the presence of his Creator?
He looks dreamingly out at the window. The plate-glass and damask are
not there now; the sunshine is warm and the air balmy. A mild, breezy
March morning, and he is standing on a corner, looking far down the
street. "She is coming, coming;" the dark eyes beam on him, and the
radiant face flushes the pallor of his cheek;--"come." He gives one
lingering, beseeching look at the passing figure, the cigarette drops
to the carpet, the withered hands clasp convulsively the arms of the
chair, the gray head slowly falls on his breast, and one more frail
human being, exhausted with the anxieties of a long and bitter life, is
at rest forever. It's a merry Christmas, this Twenty-fifth of December,
eighteen hundred and eighty-seven,--a very merry Christmas. Times have
scarcely changed at all in the last thirty years.

How he ever got there, or when, I do not now, nor will I ever, know, but