a lighted cigar between his fingers, he
would lose himself in the music of the stately lines.

By Nebo's lonely mountain,
On this side Jordan's wave,
In a vale in the land of Moab,
There lies a lonely grave.

And no man knows that sepulchre,
And no man saw it e'er,
For the angels of God, upturned the sod,
And laid the dead man there.

Another stanza that he cared for almost as much was the one beginning:

And had he not high honor
--The hill-side for a pall,
To lie in state while angels wait
With stars for tapers tall,
And the dark rock-pines, like tossing plumes,
Over his bier to wave,
And God's own hand in that lonely land,
To lay him in the grave?

Without doubt he was moved to emulate the simple grandeur of that poem,
for he often repeated it in those days, and somewhat later we find it
copied into his notebook in full. It would seem to have become to him a
sort of literary touchstone; and in some measure it may be regarded as
accountable for the fact that in the fullness of time "he made use of the
purest English of any modern writer." These are Goodman's words, though
William Dean Howells has said them, also, in substance, and Brander
Matthews, and many others who know about such things. Goodman adds, "The
simplicity and beauty of his style are almost without a parallel, except
in the common version of the Bible," which is also true. One is reminded
of what Macaulay said of Milton:

"There would seem at first sight to be no more in his words than in other
words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced
than the past is present and the distance near. New forms of beauty
start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory
give up their dead."

One drifts ahead, remembering these things. The triumph of words, the
mastery of phrases, lay all before him at the time of which we are
writing now. He was twenty-seven. At that age Rudyard Kipling had
reached his meridian. Samuel Clemens was still in the classroom.
Everything came as a lesson-phrase, form, aspect, and combination;
nothing escaped unvalued. The poetic phase of things particularly
impressed him. Once at a dinner with Goodman, when the lamp-light from
the chandelier struck down through the claret on the tablecloth in a
great red stain, he pointed to it dramatically "Look, Joe," he said, "the
angr