es. Sometimes, when the wind and rain were beating outside, and
he was striding up and down the long room within, with only the blurred
shapes of mountains and trees outlined through the trailing rain, the
feeling of the unreality became so strong that it was hard to believe
that somewhere down below, beyond the rain and the woods, there was a
literal world--a commonplace world, where the ordinary things of life
were going on in the usual way. When the dictation finished early, there
would be music--the music that he loved most--Beethoven's symphonies,
or the Schubert impromptu, or the sonata by Chopin.--[Schubert, Op.
142, No. 2; Chopin, Op. 37, No. 2.]--It is easy to understand that this
carried one a remove farther from the customary things of life. It was a
setting far out of the usual, though it became that unique white figure
and his occupation. In my notes, made from day to day, I find that I
have set down more than once an impression of the curious unreality of
the place and its surroundings, which would show that it was not a mere
passing fancy.

I had lodgings in the village, and drove out mornings for the
dictations, but often came out again afoot on pleasant afternoons; for
he was not much occupied with social matters, and there was opportunity
for quiet, informing interviews. There was a woods path to the Upton
place, and it was a walk through a fairyland. A part of the way was
through such a growth of beech timber as I have never seen elsewhere:
tall, straight, mottled trees with an undergrowth of laurel, the
sunlight sifting through; one found it easy to expect there storybook
ladies, wearing crowns and green mantles, riding on white palfreys. Then
came a more open way, an abandoned grass-grown road full of sunlight and
perfume; and this led to a dim, religious place, a natural cathedral,
where the columns were stately pine-trees branching and meeting at the
top: a veritable temple in which it always seemed that music was about
to play. You crossed a brook and climbed a little hill, and pushed
through a hedge into a place more open, and the house stood there among
the trees.

The days drifted along, one a good deal like another, except, as the
summer deepened, the weather became warmer, the foliage changed, a
drowsy haze gathered along the valleys and on the mountain-side. He
sat more often now in a large rocking-chair, and generally seemed to be
looking through half-dosed lids toward the Monadnock heigh