His fame spread until it filled the State, and his money
still fed his vices. He never drank, and that cool, keen intellect never
lost its balance, or failed him in any encounter on the hustings on at
the bar. I often met him in public, but he never was known to go inside
a church. Once, when in a street conversation I casually made some
reference to religion, a look of displeasure passed over his face, and
he abruptly left me. I was agreeably surprised when, on more than one
occasion, he sent me a substantial token of goodwill, but I was never
able to analyze the motive that prompted him to do so. This remembrance
softens the feelings with which these lines are penciled. He went to San
Francisco, but there was no change in his life.
"It is the old story," said an acquaintance of whom I made inquiry
concerning him: "he has a large and lucrative practice, and the gamblers
get all he makes. He is getting gray, and he is failing a little. He is
a strange being."
It happened afterward that his office and mine were in the same building
and on the same floor. As we met on the stairs, he would nod to me and
pass on. I noticed that he was indeed "failing." He looked-weary and
sad, and the cold or defiant gleam in his steel-gray eyes, was changed
into a wistful and painful expression that was very pathetic.
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