It was not like him to repeat himself, and I asked what he meant by it. What follows I have put in and taken out of this biography several times. There is too much concerning myself in it to be of interest to the public, and yet the unusual nature and quality of Mr. Saltus' mind are nowhere more forcefully exemplified.
"You might be my child. You may marry again some day?" he said.
"I might be struck by a comet or tumble on the third rail, with more probability. Jamais! Having broken you in has taken me to the door of the asylum. No more experiments. My arm is tired from wielding a cat-o'-nine-tails."
"Quite so, but all literary men are not 'litterers,' and all men are not literary. You might select more wisely next time."
"Disabuse your mind of that," I told him. "Such small wisdom as I have acquired has been paid for too dearly. Besides, there is only one Snipps, and no one else would understand me."
"That's it," he said. "I was awake half of last night thinking about it. It's an awful thing to leave a helpless little girl all alone in a world of demons and vultures. The possibility haunts me."
"Then take your medicine like a good boy and stay here to look after me," he was told. "If it comes to a wheeled chair, I will wheel it, and we will go to California and live under blue skies and rose bushes, or to India, and sit at Mrs. Besant's feet."
This comforted him. Although he spoke constantly of dying, and quite as a matter of course, it was to be contradicted. He knew it was possible, but never did he admit that it was probable. The next day opened with a surprise. On my breakfast tray was the following, carefully written in Mr. Saltus' best copper-plate hand:—
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS FOR MY SUCCESSOR.
Read, mark, learn and inwardly reject.