III
We cannot wake him! With my arms clinging about him I have looked into his eyes, through the veil of my tears, and begged for one little word, and he will not answer. Oh, is it that long sleep--is it death? And will he wake no more?
FROM SATAN’S DIARY
Death has entered the world, the creatures are perishing; one of The Family is fallen; the product of the Moral Sense is complete. The Family think ill of death--they will change their minds.
SAMUEL ERASMUS MOFFETT
AUGUST 16, 1908
HIS CHARACTER AND HIS DEATH
August 16th.--Early in the evening of the first day of this month the telephone brought us a paralyzing shock: my nephew, Samuel E. Moffett, was drowned. It was while sea bathing. The seas were running high and he was urged not to venture out, but he was a strong swimmer and not afraid. He made the plunge with confidence, his frightened little son looking on. Instantly he was helpless. The great waves tossed him hither and thither, they buried him, they struck the life out of him. In a minute it was all over.
He was forty-eight years old, he was at his best, physically and mentally, and was well on his way toward earned distinction. He was large-minded and large-hearted, there was no blot nor fleck upon his character, his ideals were high and clean, and by native impulse and without effort he lived up to them.
He had been a working journalist, an editorial writer, for nearly thirty years, and yet in that exposed position had preserved his independence in full strength and his principles undecayed. Several years ago he accepted a high place on the staff of Collier’s Weekly and was occupying it when he died.
In an early chapter of my Autobiography, written three years ago, I have told how he wrote from San Francisco, when he was a stripling and asked me to help him get a berth on a daily paper there; and how he submitted to the severe conditions I imposed, and got the berth and kept it sixteen years.