health began to fail. Years of pawing and paring over old volumes amid
the dust and close air of book-lined rooms brought on a cough, a cough
which made physicians who heard it look grave. It was before the days
of Adirondack Mountain sanitariums. They told John Bangs to go South,
to Florida. He went there, leaving his son at school in Boston, but
the warm air and sunshine did not help the cough. Then they sent him to
Colorado, where the boy Galusha joined him. For five years he and the
boy lived in Colorado. Then John Capen Bangs died.

Dorothy Hancock Cabot had a sister, an older sister, Clarissa Peabody
Cabot. Clarissa did not marry a librarian as her sister did, nor did
she marry a financier, as was expected of her. This was not her fault
exactly; if the right financier had happened along and asked, it is
quite probable that he would have been accepted. He did not happen
along; in fact, no one happened along until Clarissa was in her thirties
and somewhat anxious. Then came Joshua Bute of Chicago, and when wooed
she accepted and married him. More than that, she went with him to
Chicago, where stood the great establishment which turned out "Bute's
Banner Brand Butterine" and "Bute's Banner Brand Leaf Lard" and "Bute's
Banner Brand Back-Home Sausage" and "Bute's Banner Brand Better Baked
Beans." Also there was a magnificent mansion on the Avenue.

Aunt Clarissa had family and culture and a Boston manner. Uncle Joshua
had a kind heart, a hemispherical waistcoat and a tremendous deal of
money. Later on the kind heart stopped beating and Aunt Clarissa was
left with the money, the mansion and--but of course the "manner" had
been all her own all the time.

So when John Bangs died, Aunt Clarissa Bute sent for the son, talked
with the latter, and liked him. She wrote to her relative, Augustus