Indeed, he did not cease talking all the time we were with him, until he was given opiates and taken to the hospital.
Here he spent many weary weeks, and was only pulled through after the most persistent care. But though he got on his feet again, he did not fully recover, and even a long trip to the Bermudas did not get his lungs in shape. He spent some months in Southern California, and settled finally among the Carolina hills, the nearest point to his old New England home, where he could expect to prolong his days.
I have seen many gallant winners, many whose courage and determination made them such; but when I tell the story that comes closest to my heart, I tell of one a notch above them all. I tell of Teddy Atherton, of his last "half" which he lost.
There were three of us in my office at the gymnasium. It was late afternoon of a February day. The hail was beating against my windows, and a punching-bag was drumming the "devil's tattoo" in the next room. There were all sorts of sounds outside, from the clatter of pulley weights dropped on the floor to the steady tramp of the runner's feet on the track overhead, but in my room a Sabbath stillness reigned.
Fred Seever was perched on a chair in one corner ready dressed for departure, and N. P. Sawyer, familiarly known as "Shack," sat on the weighing scales clad only in trunks, jersey, and an air of melancholy. It would not have been a comfortable seat for most anatomies, and the metal work must have felt chilly; but Shack had eccentric tastes, and never occupied a chair if he could find anything else to hold him.
I had just remarked in the quietest manner possible, "It is pretty well settled that Seever does not run this year." This was the cause of Shack's melancholy and Seever's silence.