"All my thoughts are poetry since baby came," my wife said once,
rapturously.

Our boy lived for twenty months. He was a sturdy, toddling
rogue, so full of life and laughter and mischief that, when he
died, one day, after the illness of an hour, it seemed a most
absurd thing that he should be dead--a thing I could have
laughed at, until belief forced itself into my soul like a
burning, searing iron.

I think I grieved over my little son's death as deeply and
sincerely as ever man did, or could. But the heart of the father
is not as the heart of the mother. Time brought no healing to
Josephine; she fretted and pined; her cheeks lost their pretty
oval, and her red mouth grew pale and drooping.

I hoped that spring might work its miracle upon her. When the
buds swelled, and the old earth grew green in the sun, and the
gulls came back to the gray harbor, whose very grayness grew
golden and mellow, I thought I should see her smile again. But,
when the spring came, came the dream-child, and the fear that was
to be my companion, at bed and board, from sunsetting to
sunsetting.

One night I awakened from sleep, realizing in the moment of
awakening that I was alone. I listened to hear whether my wife
were moving about the house. I heard nothing but the little
splash of waves on the shore below and the low moan of the
distant ocean.