ere tenderness, but sought nothing from him as a
philosopher. It was good nevertheless to meet him in the wood paths,
or sometimes in our avenue, with that pure intellectual gleam diffused
about his presence like the garment of a Shining One; and he so quiet,
so simple, so without pretension, encountering each man alike as if
expecting to receive more than he could impart. And in truth, the
heart of many an ordinary man had, perchance, inscriptions which he
could not read.

But it was impossible to dwell in his vicinity without inhaling more
or less the mountain atmosphere of his lofty thought, which in the
brains of some people wrought a singular giddiness--new truth being as
heady as new wine. Never was a poor little country village infested
with such a variety of queer, strangely drest, oddly behaved mortals,
most of whom took upon themselves to be important agents of the
world's destiny, yet were simply bores of a very intense water. Such,
I imagine, is the invariable character of persons who crowd so closely
about an original thinker as to draw in his unuttered breath, and thus
to become imbued with a false originality. This triteness of novelty
is enough to make any man of common sense blaspheme at all ideas of
less than a century's standing, and pray that the world may be
petrified and rendered immovable in precisely the worst moral and
physical state that it ever yet arrived at, rather than be benefited
by such schemes of such philosophers....

Glancing back over what I have written, it seems but the scattered
reminiscences of a single summer. In fairyland there is no measurement
of time; and in a spot so sheltered from the turmoil of life's ocean,
three years hasten away with a noiseless flight, as the breezy
sunshine chases the cloud shadows across the depths of a still valley.
Now came hints, growing more and more distinct, that the owner of the
old house was pining for his native air. Carpenters next appeared,
making a tremendous racket among the outbuildings, strewing the green
grass with pine shavings and chips of chestnut joists, and vexing the
whole antiquity of the place with their discordant renovations. Soon,
moreover, they divested our abode of the veil of woodbine which had
crept over a large portion of its southern face. All the aged mosses
were cleared unsparingly away, and there were horrible whispers about
brushing up the external walls with a coat of paint--a purpose as
little to my taste as