l stillness of the forest. His experience was entirely
first-hand, and related with unconsciousness that it was not common to
all. There was nothing of the mystic or the sentimentalist, only a vivid
realism, in that nearness of God of which he spoke,--"as near some-times
as those trees,"--and of the holy voice, that, in a time of inward
struggle, had seemed to him to come from the depths of the forest,
saying, "Poor soul, I am the way."

In later years there was a "revival" in Keene Valley, the result of
which was a number of young "converts," whom Phelps seemed to regard
as a veteran might raw recruits, and to have his doubts what sort of
soldiers they would make.

"Waal, Jimmy," he said to one of them, "you've kindled a pretty good
fire with light wood. That's what we do of a dark night in the woods,
you know but we do it just so as we can look around and find the solid
wood: so now put on your solid wood."

In the Sunday Bible classes of the period Phelps was a perpetual anxiety
to the others, who followed closely the printed lessons, and beheld
with alarm his discursive efforts to get into freer air and light. His
remarks were the most refreshing part of the exercises, but were outside
of the safe path into which the others thought it necessary to win
him from his "speckerlations." The class were one day on the verses
concerning "God's word" being "written on the heart," and were keeping
close to the shore, under the guidance of "Barnes's Notes," when Old
Phelps made a dive to the bottom, and remarked that he had "thought a
good deal about the expression, 'God's word written on the heart,'
and had been asking himself how that was to be done; and suddenly it
occurred to him (having been much interested lately in watching the work
of a photographer) that, when a photograph is going to be taken, all
that has to be done is to put the object in position, and the sun makes
the picture; and so he rather thought that all we had got to do was to
put our hearts in place, and God would do the writin'."

Phelps's theology, like his science, is first-hand. In the woods, one
day, talk ran on the Trinity as being nowhere asserted as a doctrine in
the Bible, and some one suggested that the attempt to pack these
great and fluent mysteries into one word must always be more or
less unsatisfactory. "Ye-es," droned Phelps: "I never could see much
speckerlation in that expression the Trinity. Why, they'd a good deal
better say Legion