Life — November 22, 1906 — page 6: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

uC: ty of the valley, radiance of It wasa morning that I shall never forget. The bea clean washed by a heavy rain the night before, was t yellow sunshine, that white- flecked blue sky, and those stretches of brilliant varying green with white houses picked out among it, which have made June in that region famous. All the flowers but the tardy roses were in full bloom; the peonies made the terraces before the hill house seem one enormous burst of color hurled on a green velvet tapestry. The quiet of the Sabbath lay brooding over the town, and coming up the hill were little groups of neighbors returning from church. Mrs. Raymond had been staying with the Griers for the month, and she and the girls with some friends were just turning in the gate when she caught sight of her husband’s white face as he and the colonel, standing before an upper window, saw our party and turned away to come down. Instinctively she ran a little way up the walk to the wide-open door, within which we could see the double stair and its old-fashioned turn and landing. Vividly, as if it were an hour ago, I see the two men, so different in type, so utterly unlike in life, descending the steps, care and anxiety written on every feature of their fac Just at the landing the colonel reeled, caught feebly at the rail, pitched forward as Raymond cried out in horror and caught vainly at his arm, and came crashing down the flight, to lie bleeding and dead across his own threshold. Still in my mind’s eye I see the hurrying figures, hear the bitter cries of anguish and watch the startled neighbors coming to tender their aid to the stricken household. Leaning against one of the pillars, looking off across the far hills of the old State, stood Raymond, his face like white clay and every line of his mouth and jaw so changed that I knew Fate held the victory over him. The next day he was of necessity in the saddle again in New York, but all the tide was against him, his last bulwark was gone, and when the Exchange opened the next morning the first feature of the day was the announcement of the failure of the old firm of which he was the real head, and among the brokers who paused a moment—a moment only in their own affairs—the whispered truth went abroad that HAS THE STRENGTH OF, | GIBRALTAR i Edward Raymond had collapsed physically and mentally, and was at that moment battling with death in an uptown sanitarium, Strange to say he survived, but all his former powers of aggression were gone. When the entangled affairs of his house were straightened out it was found that the ruin was complete, and when the courts were through all that was left of the splendid fortune was a little house ina suburb of Brooklyn, in his wife’s name, something she had bought intending to give it to a faithful servant some years before. There I saw them the last time—she sewing peacefully on the little porch, he pottering around the small lawn, looking after his pet plants and shrubs, the two of them living quietly and perhaps more happily than ever before on the $1,200 per year which comes in from the investment of the $25,000 which they received last winter when the endowment policy matured. Of course the colonel’s death left his tobacco deals half finished, his estate’s losses through Raymond’s failure did the remaining execu- tion, and when the administration had cleared up the affairs of Colonel Denby Grier, the sole ward between his children and complete depend- ency, the only thing to keep his daughters from going into the town mills to earn their own living was the $50,000 Prudential Insurance policy. In the words of old Judge Sam, the colonel’s lifelong friend, a poor man himself, “It stood out like a chimney tower above the black- ened ruins of a mansion that had been swept by fire.” So, it seems to me, the lesson is complete. In setting it forth I am glad it redounds to the benefit of that great institution which in the stress of a late hysterical day has not been found vulnerable to assault any more than that mighty Rock, the impregnable Gibraltar, the Keeper of the Eastern Gate, whose stanchness it has taken for its emblem. The principle is good, and the millions who have their welfare bound up in the conduct of this company have shown their complete approval of that same conduct. I cannot forget the monition in the sight of Colonel Denby Grier at the height of a noble and unsullied career of success, plunging down to lie white and silent before the eyes of those entirely dependent on his continued existence, Life's Advertiser, November 22, comicbooks.com