Toward the end, meeting him on a public occasion, I said: "You work too hard--you are not looking well." "I am dying," said he.
"Yes," I replied in the way of banter, "you are dying of fame and fortune." But I went no further.

He was in no mood for the old verbal horseplay.
He looked wan and wizened.

Yet there were still several years before him.

When he came from Mannheim to Paris it was clear that the end was nigh.

I did not see him--he was too ill to see any one--but Frank Mason kept me advised from day to day, and when, a month or two later, having reached home, the news came to us that he was dead we were nowise surprised, and almost consoled by the thought that rest had come at last.
Frank Mason and his wife--"the Masons," they were commonly called, for Mrs.Mason made a wondrous second to her husband--were from Cleveland, Ohio, she a daughter of Judge Birchard--Jennie Birchard--he a rising young journalist caught in the late seventies by the glitter of a foreign appointment.