In times past I have seen what men call tragedies--I saw once a perfect young man die in his strength--but it seems to me I never knew anything more tragic than the life and death of Old Toombs.

If it cannot be said of a man when he dies that either his nation, his state, his neighborhood, his family, or at least his wife or child, is better for his having lived, what CAN be said for him?
Old Toombs is dead.

Like Jehoram, King of Judah, of whom it is terribly said in the Book of Chronicles, "he departed without being desired." Of this story of Nathan Toombs we talked much and long there in the Ransome home.

I was with them, as I said, about two days--kept inside most of the time by a driving spring rain which filled the valley with a pale gray mist and turned all the country roads into running streams.
One morning, the weather having cleared, I swung my bag to my shoulder, and with much warmth of parting I set my face again to the free road and the open country..