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great many so-called friends, I haven't many real ones
– Cubby & Raymond, John Edgar & Boulter, Sandy & John
Jameson about make up the list. It seems such a
stupid causeless thing for a man so brilliant & courageous
to die of a thing like fever in a place like London.
Out here one gets accustomed to death – accustomed to
dining with a man one week & hearing that he has got a
bullet through his head the next: but death out here
is a different & simpler thing. I think Cubby's death the
saddest thing I have ever known – far sadder really than
Lorney Balfour's or Herbert Howard's, because he
was a far abler man – one of the two or three ablest
men I have ever known. When I think of
our old walking tours & escapades I nearly cry. Do
you remember Henley's lines on Stevenson?

"O Death & Time, they chime, they chime,
Like bells at sunset falling,
They end the song, and right the wrong,
And set the old echoes calling:
For Death & Time bring on the prime
Of God’s own chosen weather,