ABSTRACT
After the author's year spent in Rome his life had become different. This was due partly to the fact that his mother's life had become different. A few years before this she had married Dr. Robert Abbe, Chief Surgeon of St. Luke's Hospital in New York. This marriage had its romance. Many years before, when she was still a girl, his mother was keeping watch by her father's death-bed at St. Luke's Hospital. His grand-father, by the way, had been kept alive, awaiting her coming, by the attending physician who knew of his patient's love of ancient Greek. Being himself a classicist, when he saw his patient sinking into the last lethargy, he started reciting a Pindaric Ode. His grand-father recovered consciousness and finished the passage.
