Page:Tex; a chapter in the life of Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (IA texchapterinlife00mcke).pdf/203



''not the only Beppo on the peach (damn your British metaphors!): you might not believe it otherwise. But you may picture the courteous terms in which I declined.''

''There is nothing for nervous dyspepsia or gastric horribobblums like seven goodish hours in a swift and powerful railway-express. I have been free from pain or sickness for the first night since Wednesday week. But I slept little. From 1 a. m. onwards I spent a sleepless, painless night.''

The hotel is comfortable and commodious in an old-fashioned country-house way; no central heating, but big fires; a certain amount of intrigue with Lizzie the chambermaid to secure a really hot bath: you know the sort of thing; immense grounds, a very park of 100 acres, which I shall never leave, because, if I did, I should never get back: we stand too high.

Bless you.

''Ever yours, Tex.''

It was the last letter that I ever received from him; and on Monday, December the fifth, as I was in the middle of answering it, a telegram informed me that he had died that morning. As he was getting up, he collapsed