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 been happy—as happy as such things can make a man—only that at the bottom of his desk there lay (and he had never had the courage to destroy them) a little pile of faded manuscripts, written in a boyish hand, that would speak to him of the memory of a poor lad who had once paced the city's feet-worn stones, dreaming of no other greatness than that of being one of God's messengers to men, and who had died, and had been buried for all eternity, long years ago."

It was a very sad story, but not exactly the sort of sad story, I felt, that the public wants in a Christmas number. So I had to fall back upon the broken-hearted maiden, after all!