HIS LAST APPEARANCE.

Waikato Argus, Volume IV, Issue 275, 16 April 1898, Page 2 (Supplement)

HIS LAST APPEARANCE.

In one of the low back rooms on the third floor of a business house down in the town lived a little old gentleman, all alone. At one time in his life ho had been a prosperous merchant and muchrejected citizen, but that was a gO)d many years ago, and now he has sunk out of memory and prosperity, and lived his lonely life of dull routine, alternating between the big wholesale store wheic he was one of a hundred or so employes, and Irg little room. A great many poplc bowed to him in a casual fashion as they passed him on the street, but it was only semi occasionally that anybody hid time, or inclination to stop for a word wi'li him ; though no doubt ten out of twenty of hi sold acquaint uiees would have taken that time if they had known how it would brightcen theloagdul! day for him. He was always neat and trim-looking in his shining long-tailed black coat and snowy collar; his boots always shone, for he saw to it himself, and his clear-cut pale old face had a certain dignity and consciousness of having been a successful mm and of still being a gentleman, though he was only a lonely old clerk in a clattering and progressive business house that belonged to somebody else. His dim blue eyes looked out on the world with a sad, rather bewildered look, and the tims were suspiciously red ; the tip of his long, aristocratic nose was purplish too, and his thin lips hung a little loose at times, but nobody ever saw him when he was not grave, dignified, and courteous with the manner of a bygone generation. Altogether he was a stately, even pompous, and very pathetic little figure of decayed gentility ; and nobody knew how he occupied those long, long eveninc-a in the dull little back room, for nobody cvor went to see. One night he was sitting over bis meagre fire with an evening paper—for he permitted himself that luxury—spread over his thin knees, partly for the added warmth, and partly from a half unconscious desire not to be in too great a hurry to get through with his only diversion, when hia dim eyes caught the big head-lines which proclaimed to the much interested world of society the death of one of its important factors. Yes, she was dead ; the gracious, lovely, kindly great lady and dead, and society mourned as befitted the occasion. The old man read the things which the reporter had seen fit to write up and turn in as "copy," and the slow tears gathered in his dim old eyes and rolled down on the paper. His dull thoughts travelled back to the time when the gracious middleaged woman who lay dead was a fair young girl, and he, the worn-out old, man, was her dashing young lover. They had parted, and each had married somebody else ; and he was only a tired old clerk, but he remembered that time so many years ago, and forgot the rest. Sitting there, looking into the fire and holding the paper in hands, he was startled by a knock at his door. Nobody had knocked at his door at that time of night since ho had lived there, and he had lived there seven years : so he was startled. But he gathered himself together and opened the door. It was a relation of the dead woman ; a cold but perfectly polite cousin, who was obeying what he considered a very surprising and unaccountable request of his dead kinswoman in asking the man to help carry her to the grave. When he was gone, the old man sat for a while looking at the fire, and occasionally he said softly, half aloud, "So she had not forgotten altogether," and he even smile "a little, though his eyes were wet. Finally he got up, and began to move around the room, busying himself brushing his worn b!ack clothes, seeing to it that he had a very white collar and that his shoes were irreproachable. He even brushed his thin gray hair, and washed his long, slender hands, drying them carefully. He moved about the room quite briskly, with an alert and interested look, quite unlike his accustomed air of dull and dignified resignation. He was very sorry and sad at the thought of the beautiful, bright young girl dead yonder in her stately home, but the cockles of his old neglected heart were warmed and gladdened, and he had a queer little feeling of child-like pleasure and importance in anticipation of tomorrow. At last, when he was very tired and the dawn was beginning to show faintly in the east, he crawled into bed, and nestled luxuriously down on his hard mattress, saying to himself, half aloud, "At least she had not forgotten altogether.