“I said that if you have determined to live honestly, that is something.”
That evening I saw him walking up and down the kitchen floor with our Baby in his arms—for that Winter we had a homeless mother and Baby at the Colony. The Baby was kicking and laughing as he carried her with measured stride around the room.
“I simply must put her to sleep,” he said, confidingly.
“Why don’t you sing to her,” I suggested.
“I am hazy on my slumber songs,” he said.
A little later the Baby was nodding with half closed eyes.
“Doesn’t she look pretty,” said the admiring mother.
“She looks like Jeffries at the end of the fifth,” was Jim’s reply.
A few moments later I heard him as he walked, singing music of his own improvising to the words of Wilde’s prison poem: