and the days are very, very long, while the nights are yet infinitely
longer.

Thomas Cathcart Blake, in the vastness of all that now was not, forgot to
care for himself. He, who had been jovial, became silent. Some times, of
nights, he would walk alone for hours. The weather made no difference--in
fact, he seldom noticed what the weather was. He was an old man now,
close to sixty....

Dr. DeLancey, on a night visit, met him one thick, sodden night at the
corner of Thirty-third Street and the Avenue, coming from the club. The
good doctor bumbled out of his brougham, seized him by the arm and drew
him wet and dripping into its protected interior.

"You fossiliferous-headed old chump," he howled, exasperatedly. "You pin-
headed old amphibian. If your sole and utter ambition is to get pneumonia
and die, I don't know any way in which you can better achieve your
purpose. Sit down in the corner there and drink this," he extracted from
his case a little flask of brandy, "or I'll ask the horse to come in and
bite you!"

"Turn around there, Mose!" he yelled, "and drive to Mr. Blake's house."

Mose did so; and once there, the doctor, abusing and bullying his
patient, got him upstairs and into the bed, and then applied to the
protesting man who seldom had known what it was even to have a cold, all
manner of exposurial antidotes.

"But the patient that you were going to see!" protested Thomas Cathcart
Blake.