He was not fitted by temperament to
assimilate anything quite so strenuously chromatic as that, and as a
consequence shortly after he had retired to his studio for the night
the conflicting tints began to get in their deadly work and within two
hours he was completely doubled up. The pain he suffered was awful.
Agony was bliss alongside of the pangs that now afflicted him and all
the palliatives and pain killers known to man were tried without avail,
and then, just as he was about to give himself up for lost, an amateur
cornetist who occupied a studio on the floor above began to play the
Lost Chord. A counter-pain set in immediately. At the second bar of the
Lost Chord the awful pain that was gradually gnawing away at his vitals
seemed to lose its poignancy in the face of the greater suffering, and
physical relief was instant. As the musician proceeded the internal
disorder yielded gradually to the external and finally passed away
entirely, leaving him so far from prostrated that by one A.M. he was out
of bed and actually girding himself with a shotgun and an Indian Club to
go upstairs for a physical encounter with the cornetist.
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