Counting the liars and scoundrels and double-dealers and villains who pass
Last night Aaron Marlin died. He had lived for ninety years in this world, and had seen much and suffered much, and has died as a child turns to sleep. It was quiet and still at his home among the elms as he lay in his coffin. The mourners spoke in low and solemn tones, and the blinds were drawn as if death were shy. As he lay there in the great hush that was over the house, there passed before it on the sidewalk two who spoke as low as the mourners, though they were oblivious to the house of death. They trod slowly, and a great calm was on their souls. One of the scribes who sets down these lines stood in the shadow of the doorway pine-tree and saw the lovers passing; he felt the silence and the sorrow behind the door he was about to enter; and there he stood wondering—between Death and Love—the End and the Beginning of God's great mystery of Life. Now, with the sense of that great mystery upon him, with all of this pied skein of life about him, he puts down his pen, and looks out of the window as the thread winds down the street.
For "Thirty" is in for the day.