ll be in quiet
retirement and have her physician's care. Miss Hobby came, and on the
21st of May the dictations were resumed. We began in his bedroom, as
before, but the feeling there was depressing--the absence of the great
carved bed and other furnishings, which had been so much a part of the
picture, was felt by all of us. Nothing of the old luxury and richness
was there. It was a summer-furnished place, handsome but with the
customary bareness. At the end of this first session he dressed in his
snowy flannels, which he had adopted in the place of linen for summer
wear, and we descended to the veranda and looked out over that wide,
wonderful expanse of scenery.

"I think I shall like it," he said, "when I get acquainted with it, and
get it classified and labeled, and I think we'll do our dictating out
here hereafter. It ought to be an inspiring place."

So the dictations were transferred to the long veranda, and he was
generally ready for them, a white figure pacing up and down before that
panoramic background. During the earlier, cooler weeks he usually
continued walking with measured step during the dictations, pausing now
and then to look across the far-lying horizon. When it stormed we moved
into the great living-room, where at one end there was a fireplace with
blazing logs, and at the other the orchestrelle, which had once more been
freighted up those mountain heights for the comfort of its harmonies.
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