James Pethel

From the opening

I was shocked this morning when I saw in my newspaper a paragraph announcing his sudden death. I do not say that the shock was very disagreeable. One reads a newspaper for the sake of news. Had I never met James Pethel, belike I should never have heard of him: and my knowledge of his death, coincident with my knowledge that he had existed, would have meant nothing at all to me. If you learn suddenly that one of your friends is dead, you are wholly distressed. If the death is that of a mere acquaintance whom you have recently seen, you are disconcerted, pricked is your sense of mortality; but you do find great solace in telling other people that you met "the poor fellow" only the other day, and that he was "so full of life and spirits," and that you remember he said--whatever you may remember of his sayings. If the death is that of a mere acquaintance whom you have not seen for years, you are touched so lightly as to find solace enough in even such faded reminiscence as is yours to offer. Seven years have passed since the day when last I saw James Pethel, and that day was the morrow of my first meeting with him.

I had formed the habit of spending August in Dieppe. The place was then less overrun by trippers than it is now. Some pleasant English people shared it with some pleasant French people. We used rather to resent the race-week--the third week of the month--as an intrusion on our privacy. We sneered as we read in the Paris edition of "The New York Herald" the names of the intruders, though by some of these we were secretly impressed. We disliked the nightly crush in the baccarat-room of the casino, and the croupiers' obvious excitement at the high play.

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