morning he lay stretched at length in a long chair on the uncovered veranda, a flood of inspiriting sunlight upon him, and a little breeze, brisk with the cool zest of Autumn, stirring his hair. And he had looked up from the white and purple hands and had seen a new world of green and gold and blue spread before him at his feet, a twelve-mile panorama of Nature’s finest work retouched and varnished overnight. He had feasted his eyes upon it and felt a glad stirring at his heart. And that day had marked the beginning of a new stage of recovery; he had asked, “How long?”

[49]

The last week in October had seen his release. He had returned to his long-vacant apartment in New York fully determined to start at once the work of rebuilding his fallen fortunes. But his physician had interposed. “I’ve done what I can for you,” he said, “and the rest is in your own hands. Get away from New York; it won’t supply what you need. Get into the country somewhere, away from cities and tickers. Hunt,[50] fish, spend your time out of doors. There’s nothing organically wrong with that heart of yours, but it’s pretty tired yet; nurse it awhile.”

[50]

“The programme sounds attractive,” Winthrop had replied, smilingly, “but it’s expensive. Practically I am penniless. Give me a year to gather the threads up again and get things a-going once more, and I’ll take your medicine gladly.”

The physician had shrugged his shoulders with a grim smile.

“I have never heard,” he replied, “that the hunting or fishing was especially good in the next world.”

“What do you mean?” asked Winthrop, frowning.

“Just this, sir. You say you can’t afford to take a vacation. I say you can’t afford not to take it. I’ve lived a good deal longer than you and I give you my word I never saw a poor man who wasn’t a whole lot better off than any dead one of my acquaintance. I don’t want to frighten you, but I tell you frankly that if you stay here[51] and buckle down to rebuilding your business you’ll be a damned poor risk for any insurance company inside of two weeks. It’s better to live poor than to die rich. Take your choice.”

[51]

Winthrop had taken it. After all, poverty is comparative, and he realized that he was still as well off as many a clerk who was contentedly keeping a family on his paltry twenty or thirty dollars a week. 

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