Estelle said, half-reprovingly, “‘If thou faint in the day of adversity, thy faith is small.’”
“I never pretended to have faith. I never thought that I had any, except perhaps when none was needed. Faith is like courage; it must be born in one, or be cultivated by contact with danger. When there is no danger to test one’s faith, there is no means of knowing whether or not any has been born with one. Then when faith is most needed, it may be found entirely lacking.”
With such thoughts and words our conversation continued until the physician, mindful of his patient’s physical welfare, signed to Estelle to leave me—which she did, pressing on my pallid forehead a soft, tender kiss that meant hope and love, confidence and reassurance.
A soothing draught composed me to dreamless sleep, and when again I woke it was to see the love-light in my dear one’s eyes, patiently watching my restful slumber and awaiting my return to consciousness.
Her gentle ministrations, as much as the doctor’s skill, restored health and strength to my enfeebled mind and body. We tacitly avoided the subject of my so-suddenly blasted ambitions, and talked of love and happy life together, in a pleasant uneventful future, such as had often engrossed our conversation before my eyes had seen from afar that promised land which I was never to enter.
With returning vigor, I renewed my former plans for my future and Estelle’s; but as my steps increased in firmness, my thoughts still reverted to Brathwaite’s wonderful prophetic manuscript, some of the details of which I set about to make realities of the present, rather than of a generation hence. The hope of realizing for myself and Estelle an early return from my mental labors in their development and embodiment, lent new strength, suppleness and deftness to my touch, and seemed to make my insight keener, my inventive powers more fertile, more promptly responsive to the demands upon them. Festina lente became my motto. I doubted as I hoped; I criticised relentlessly as I solved method after method, and produced result after result. At each new step I felt the ground firmly before trusting to it; I looked at each production as though it were that of some hated rival whom I had in my power to thrust down, keep down, by savage search for faults and merciless exposure of each weakness in design, construction or operation.
The news of the dramatic death of Brathwaite and some inkling of the fact that he had for so many years been engaged in scientific research, every vestige of result from which was believed to have perished with “the old Professor”—as the journals of the day styled him—had startled the city; and gave three-column stories, spread headed, sub-headed and padded ad nauseam; no two agreeing, save that in all “the fire-fiend” was rampant; “holocaust” and “pyre,” “cremation” and “conflagration,” vied with each other in harrowing up the reader’s nerves. The suburban press took up the strain in more subdued tones and in less space, although no more grammatically—while the far-away sheets of Boom City or Dead Man’s Gulch paragraphed it as the shocking self-destruction of Robert Batterman, an eccentric metropolitan hermit who had a mania for collecting old almanacs and back numbers of periodicals. “Such is fame,” said Byron, “to have one’s name misspelled in the ‘Gazette.’”
The Masonic body of which Brathwaite had been for so many years an unobtrusive member announced a Lodge of Sorrow in memory of the deceased brother; and most imposing were the ceremonies, most impressive were the addresses upon that occasion. From the pamphlet account of this function, printed by resolution of the Lodge, I excerpt the remarks of M. W. Past Master Ashley, as showing in some degree the respect in which Brathwaite was held by those who knew him, and the veneration which his upright life, his charitable although retiring disposition, and his many and varied accomplishments, inspired.
EULOGIA.
“My Brethren:—