neys back to
Pepacton, inspired by the scenes amid which he first felt the desire to
write.

Seeing him daily in these scenes, one feels that it may, indeed, be said
of him as Matthew Arnold said of Sophocles, that he sees life steadily,
and sees it whole. What a masterly handling is his of the facts of the
universe, giving his reader the truths of the scientist touched with an
idealism such as is only known to the poet's soul! A friend, writing me
of "The Summit of the Years," spoke of "its splendid ascent by a rapid
crescendo from the personal to the cosmic," and of how gratifying it is
to see our author putting forth such fine work in his advancing years.
Another friend called it "a beautiful record of a beautiful life."
I recall the September morning on which he began that essay. He had
written the first sentence--"The longer I live, the more I am impressed
with the beauty and the wonder of the world"--when he was interrupted
for a time. He spoke of what he had written, and said he hardly knew
what he was going to make of it. Later in the day he brought me a large
part of the essay to copy, and I remember how moved I was at its beauty,
how grateful that I had been present at its inception and birth.

One afternoon he called us from our separate work, the artist from
her canvas and me from my typewriter, to look at a wonderful rainbow
spanning the wide valley below us. The next day he brought me a short
manuscript saying, "If that seems worth while to you, you may copy
it--I don't know whether there is anything in it or not." It was "The
Rainbow," which appeared some months later in a popular magazine--a
little gem, and a good illustration of his ability to throw the witchery
of the ideal around the facts of nature. The lad with us had been
learning Wordsworth's "Rainbow," a favorite of Mr. Burroughs, and it
was no unusual thing of a morning to hear the rustic philosopher while
frying the bacon for breakfast, singing contentedly in a sort of tune of
his own making:--

"And I could wish my days to be
Bound each to each by natural piety."

One afternoon a neighbor came and took him in her automobile a ride of
fifty miles or more, the objective point of which was Ashland, the place
where he had attended a seminary in 1854 and 1855. On his return he said
it seemed like wizard's work that he could be whisked there and back
in one afternoon, to that place which had been the goal of his youthful
dreams! Th