Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/324

 ment of the gambler who has staked everything on a losing game. Uncle Bobby gazed, fascinated, at the picture, and when it was put up for sale he was the only bidder, and he got it cheap.

This happened in New York, whither he had drifted in his quest after wealth and fame, and in that human wilderness he lived the life of a hermit for many years, years of dull routine, sometimes in the employ of a fickle government, sometimes in no employ at all. Occasionally, when he signed his name, he was reminded of all the prosperous, well-to-do Pratts, who had beencontent to lead reasonable lives in his native town of Dunbridge. After the death of his mother—that gifted and fascinating Emmeline Pratt whose memory was still green in the paths she had trod,—there was no tie strong enough remaining to draw him back to his own people. The most genial of men in prosperity, he felt a shrinking from old associations, now that he had made a failure of the game of life. He could still crack a joke with his landlady or the bootblack; he could still toss a coin from his scanty store to cheer a beggar; but, for his own part, he was a hermit in a wilderness, in that waste of brick walls and smoky air which is so much drearier than nature's wildernesses.

There came a time when Uncle Bobby fell ill, and had to keep his bed. As he lay there, passing in review the twenty cheerless years since he had had anything in particular to live for, he