He did not come down to dinner, and when I went up afterward I found him curiously agitated. He said:
"For one who does not believe in spirits I have had a most peculiar experience. I went into the bath-room just now and closed the door. You know how warm it always is in there, and there are no draughts. All at once I felt a cold current of air about me. I thought the door must be open; but it was closed. I said, 'Jean, is this you trying to let me know you have found the others?' Then the cold air was gone."
I saw that the incident had made a very great impression upon him; but I don't remember that he ever mentioned it afterward.
Next day the storm had turned into a fearful blizzard; the whole hilltop was a raging, driving mass of white. He wrote most of the day, but stopped now and then to read some of the telegrams or letters of condolence which came flooding in. Sometimes he walked over to the window to look out on the furious tempest. Once, during the afternoon, he said:
"Jean always so loved to see a storm like this, and just now at Elmira they are burying her."
Later he read aloud some lines by Alfred Austin, which Mrs. Crane had sent him lines which he had remembered in the sorrow for Susy:
When last came sorrow, around barn and byre Wind-careen snow, the year's white sepulchre, lay. "Come in," I said, "and warm you by the fire"; And there she sits and never goes away.
It was that evening that he came into the room where Mrs. Paine and I sat by the fire, bringing his manuscript.
"I have finished my story of Jean's death," he said. "It is the end of my autobiography. I shall never write any more. I can't judge it myself at all. One of you read it aloud to the other, and let me know what you think of it. If it is worthy, perhaps some day it may be published."
It was, in fact, one of the most exquisite and tender pieces of writing in the language. He had ended his literary labors with that perfect thing which so marvelously speaks the loftiness and tenderness of his soul. It was thoroughly in keeping with his entire career that he should, with this rare dramatic touch, bring it to a close. A paragraph which he omitted may be printed now:
December 27. Did I know jean's value? No, I only thought I did. I knew a ten-thousandth fraction of it, that was all. It is always so, with us, it has always been so. We are like the poor ignorant private soldier-dead, now, four hundred years--who picked up the great Sancy diamond on the field of the lost battle and sold it for a franc. Later he knew what he had done.
Shall I ever be cheerful again, happy again? Yes. And soon. For I know my temperament. And I know that the temperament is master of the man, and that he is its fettered and helpless slave and must in all things do as it commands. A man's temperament is born in him, and no circumstances can ever change it.
My temperament has never allowed my spirits to remain depressed long at a time.
That was a feature of Jean's temperament, too. She inherited it from me. I think she got the rest of it from her mother.
Jean Clemens had two natural endowments: the gift of justice and a genuine passion for all nature. In a little paper found in her desk she had written:
I know a few people who love the country as I do, but not many. Most of my acquaintances are enthusiastic over the spring and summer months, but very few care much for it the year round. A few people are interested in the spring foliage and the development of the wild flowers--nearly all enjoy the autumn colors--while comparatively few pay much attention to the coming and going of the birds, the changes in their plumage and songs, the apparent springing into life on some warm April day of the chipmunks and woodchucks, the skurrying of baby rabbits, and again in the fall the equally sudden disappearance of some of the animals and the growing shyness of others.