IN 1907 my father took Francis Thompson to a cot-
tage of Wilfrid Blunt's in Sussex. If any circum-
stances could have improved his condition, these
probably would have done so, but he was beyond help.
"He returned," says my brother in his biography, "weaker
than he went."

"In his extremity of feebleness any hurt seemed grievous
to him. Upon an umbrella falling against him in the rail-
way carriage, he turned to me with a trembling: 'I am
the target of all disasters!' And when a busybody of a fel-
low-passenger asked him, on account of his notable thin-
ness: 'Do you suffer with your chest, sir?' Thompson,
who had but one lung, and that diseased, answered
sharply, 'No!' Even then he did not know the extent of
his trouble. In error he attributed all his ills to one cause.
My father, seeing him on his return, said to him, ' Francis,
you are ill.' 'Yes, Wilfrid,' he answered, 'I am more ill
than you think'; and then spoke a word from which both
had refrained for years, 'I am dying from laudanum poi-
soning.'

"My father asked him if he were willing to go to the

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