of the occasion. I was Agassiz's
boatman on demand, for while all the others had their personal guides
and attendants, I was his; but often when Emerson wanted a boat I
managed to provide for Agassiz with one of the unoccupied guides, and
take the place of Emerson's own guide. Thus Emerson and I had many
hours alone on the lake and in the wood. He seemed to be a living
question, perpetually interrogating his impressions of all that
there was to be seen. The rest of us were always at the surface of
things,--even the naturalists were only engaged with their anatomy;
but Emerson in the forest, or looking at the sunset from the lake,
seemed to be looking through the phenomena, studying them by their
reflections on an inner speculum.

In such a great solitude, stripped of the social conventions and
seeing men as they are, mind seems open to mind as it is quite
impossible for it to be in society, even the most informal. Agassiz
remarked, one day, when a little personal question had shown the
limitations of character of one of the company, that he had always
found in his Alpine experiences, when the company were living on terms
of compulsory intimacy, that men found each other out quickly. And so
we found it in the Adirondacks: disguises were soon dropped, and one
saw the real characters of his comrades as it was impossible to see
them in society. Conventions faded out, masks became transparent,
and for good or for ill the man stood naked before the questioning
eye,--pure personality. I think I gathered more insight into the
character of my companions in our greener Arden, in the two or three
weeks' meetings of the club, than all our lives in the city could have
given me.

And Emerson was such a study as can but rarely be given any one. The
crystalline limpidity of his character, free from all conventions,
prejudices, or personal color, gave a facility for study of the man,
limited only by the range of vision of the student. How far my vision
was competent for this study is not for me to decide; so far as it
went I profited, and so far as my experience of men goes he is unique,
not so much from intellectual power, for I should be indisposed to
accept his as the mind of the greatest calibre among those I have
known, but as one of absolute transparency of intellect, perfect
receptivity, and devotion to the truth. In the days of persecution and
martyrdom Emerson would have gone to the stake smiling and undismayed,
but questio