And when he died, to the surprise of every one, he left his sister
quite an accumulation. He had never been wholly a spendthrift. Though he
lived well at Chamberlin's in Washington and the Waldorf in New York he was
careful of his credit and his money. I dare say he was not unfortunate in
the stock market. He never married and when he died, still a youngish man
as modern ages go, all sorts of stories were told of him, and the space
writers, having a congenial subject, disported themselves voluminously.
Inevitably most of their stories were apocryphal.
I wonder shall we ever get any real truth out of what is called history?
There are so many sides to it and such a confusing din of voices. How much
does old Sam Johnson owe of the fine figure he cuts to Boswell, and, minus
Boswell, how much would be left of him? For nearly a century the Empress
Josephine was pictured as the effigy of the faithful and suffering wife
sacrificed upon the altar of unprincipled and selfish ambition--lovelorn,
deserted, heartbroken. It was Napoleon, not Josephine, except in her pride,
who suffered. Who shall tell us the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth, about Hamilton; about Burr; about Caesar, Caligula and Cleopatra?
Did Washington, when he was angry, swear like a trooper? What was the
matter with Nero?
IV
One evening Edward King and I were dining in the Champs Elysees when
he said: "There is a new coon--a literary coon--come to town.
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