The Stephen Crane Collection                      13

Walters, an employee of the Jacksonville Gas Company. In the
course of reading gas metets at the Court Hotel Walters had
become a friend and confidant of Cora, whose disastrous third
marriasje to the alcoholic Hammond McNeil was soon to end in
 

:-/
 

Pencil drawing of Cora Crane from Helen Crane's
sketchbook. (Crane Collection).

tragedy. Walters, a man of some refinement though uneducated,
seems to have combined a rather circumscribed appreciation of
literary artifacts with some realization of their monetary value.
But the Crane materials did not come to liim directly from Cora.