Passing of Good

"You can't expect sympathy from us. You look too healthy," bantered Cabinet colleagues when the Secretary of War complained, at Cabinet meeting last week, of a pain in his abdomen. By the next morning the pain was a stabbing torment. A cluster of doctors, including Secretary of the Interior Wilbur and Lieut.-Commander Joel T. Boone, the President's physician, had sent James William Good to have his appendix out.

For more than an hour Col. Williaml L. Keller, Chief Surgeon of the Walter Reed Hospital, close friend of the sick man, probed Secretary Good's abdomen. The appendix was gangrenous, perforated, and out of place, dangerously low. Doctors watching the operation shook their heads gravely.

Mr. Good, though 63 years old, emerged favorably from the anesthetic. He gave his wife lucid instructions about pressing War Department business. From his bedside went incessant reports to the White House. Two days after the operation he began to sink. At night President Hoover went to the hospital sickroom. "How are you, my dear friend?" he said. The Secretary mumbled feebly, inaudibly, tried to express appreciation, slumped back unconscious.

Pernicious sepsis spread through his system, prostrated him. Oxygen failed to revive him, as he slipped further and further away from life.

Finally, as it must to all men, Death came, quietly.