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281 morning. We chatted pleasantly until breakfast was a thing of the past. Then, after having dismissed the morning papers, as was our custom, we started out from the hotel for our walk.

I felt better. My husband’s good-humor was contagious. It affected me, and I can assure you I was not unwilling to be affected. It was a lovely sunshiny spring day, and Broadway was at its best. It was thronged. Dainty women tripped in and out of the big, well-stocked shops; the beautifully dressed children attracted my attention, and filled me with admiration of juvenile Americans; dapper little men walked quickly by, always, in a hurry on general principles. There was a blue sky overhead. Winter had been successfully vanquished and humanity seemed anxious to celebrate its defeat. I hummed the one song my mother used to make me sing 'before company,' when I was at home, and its refrain: The merry, merry sun, the mer-ry sun The merry, merry sun for me-e-e-e."

Then there was a high note at which I had always quaked, and occasionally lowered, much