The Bennington banner. [volume] (Bennington, Vt.) 1858-1894, 1892-07-15

upon him, attracted by his cheerful,
virile, kindly personality.
His face grew slightly cadaverous and
assumed hectic hue as time went on.
Sometimes his eyelids we're red-edged,
and the lines below his eyes sank deep
er, Perpendicular hollows assembled the
middle of his forehead. The smile that
had once been so radiant and so quickly
summoned was now slow tn come, and
when it appeared it was melancholy:
Formerly so observant of all external
trifles worth notice, and ready to find
amusement in casual remarks and incl
dents, he now hurried through his
luncheon abstractedly, sometimes say
ing nothing.
As to what pain he endured at home
alone he told no one. Some of the re-
porters and other pen laborers who ate
at Malonis cafe or drank at Cannikin
Club chaffed Corson about his self-ab-
sorbed manner.
''The detection that besets all married
men," Ted Clark once observed, when
Corson's newly acquired manner was
being discussed.
"He's getting ready to surprise us
with mdgnun opus that he has on the
stocks" opinioned McDuff, one night,
when Corson declined to pass an hour
with us at Rathskeller, on the ground
that he was in haste to get home.
"Perhaps you havn't noticed that he's
turning out lot of good stuff, these
days." said
81 have. He's doing more and better
work than ever isn't hep
That is what surprised me. The quail
ity of Corson's productions for maya
zine and newspaper syndicates had ad-
vanced with their quantity.
GLOW do you keep up the standard so
beautifully, old fellow" l asked him
one day, in short chat on street
corner.
By the concentration and intensity of
effort" he replied "You see l can't
afford to grind out unavailable matter.
| simply have to make everything so
striking that it catches the editors at
tention at the start, and so fairly good
that he feels bound not to send it back.
| can't waste time writing matter to be
rejected. If Il do good thing quickly
it's because I've learned how by sheer
will power to crowd an hour full OF
thought into twenty minutes"
but the reaction after this steam en-
CINE sort of labor will be frightful."
"It can't be worse than fatal,' he an
swered with doleful smile, land have
got to die anyhow. Work won't kill as
soon as anyone of great many Other
things will"
His wife had become alarmed for him
in the early stage of his race. With hel
woman's power of divination she may
have foreseen the end. But at first she
concealed her apprehension as well as
she could, and gently but constantly en-
I l. IL l.. oh
The time arrived when she pleaded with
him to take a rest.
'sNot Just yet" he said kissing her or
the forehead, that she might not see the
look that came into his face. But III
promise you solemnly that I'll stop ex
actly three weeks from to-day. It'll bC
warm weather then, and we'll go off tt
the sea somewhere. Look up the sum
mer resort guide for some quiet place OF
the New England coast-some quie
place where there are cliffs, you know
Toward the end his work began to de
teriorate in quality. Some of the offer
ings were declinedby editors, but thu
checks for articles that had long beer
submitten were now pouring in,
On the lovliest morning last June hi
redeemed his final promissory note. H'
walked home staggering with elation
''The race is won,' he gasped to me, a
his door, and he caught his wife in hi
arms, almost shouting: 1.-THE home il
ours now, every cubic inch of it!'
They were to start for the Maine coas
on that afternoon. When his wife tx
finish preparing the children for the de
parture he said to me:
"When the thing happens you tell he
what to do, old man. The two uppe
floors should bring $40 week if all tn
rooms were taken. She knows how t,
economize, I've slowed away few su
perflous hundreds for starter. I'm 81
happy
He sat down in chair and underwear
a transformation. The race was over
the tension was released. His arm
: hung limp, his head fell forward, h
breathed aloud, the muscles of his fac
{ twitched.
, When his wife came back to tell hin
that the trunks we're ready, he was dead
| A few of the boys at the Office an
elsewhere found time to 60 to his funel
{ al and to cover his body with flowers
, The Cannikin Club passed resolutions
and some one said over foaming stei
at the RathskelIer that night:
) "He was clever enough to have left
name. if he hadn't always chased tn
, immediate dollar. Its bad thing to
too avaricious."
? They knew nothing of that which ha
I persisted with him-the idea that was
: make him famous-the work unwrougf
the dream sacrificed to love.
0 He had chronicled no "brave surrel
Y der" but to have made one was perhaI
: a greater work.-R. II. Stephens in q
2 exchange.