ewhere that was
finer. And yet there was this delicacy about him, that he never
over-praised what he brought us to see, any more than one would
over-praise a friend of whom he was fond. I remember that when for
the first time, after a toilsome journey through the forest, the
splendors of the Lower Au Sable Pond broke upon our vision,--that
low-lying silver lake, imprisoned by the precipices which it reflected
in its bosom,--he made no outward response to our burst of admiration:
only a quiet gleam of the eye showed the pleasure our appreciation
gave him. As some one said, it was as if his friend had been admired
--a friend about whom he was unwilling to say much himself, but well
pleased to have others praise.

Thus far, we have considered Old Phelps as simply the product of the
Adirondacks; not so much a self-made man (as the doubtful phrase has
it) as a natural growth amid primal forces. But our study is
interrupted by another influence, which complicates the problem, but
increases its interest. No scientific observer, so far as we know,
has ever been able to watch the development of the primitive man,
played upon and fashioned by the hebdomadal iteration of "Greeley's
Weekly Tri-bune." Old Phelps educated by the woods is a fascinating
study; educated by the woods and the Tri-bune, he is a phenomenon.
No one at this day can reasonably conceive exactly what this
newspaper was to such a mountain valley as Keene. If it was not a
Providence, it was a Bible. It was no doubt owing to it that
Democrats became as scarce as moose in the Adirondacks. But it is
not of its political aspect that I speak. I suppose that the most
cultivated and best informed portion of the earth's surface--the
Western Reserve of Ohio, as free from conceit as it is from a
suspicion that it lacks anything owes its pre-eminence solely to this
comprehensive journal. It received from it everything except a
collegiate and a classical education,--things not to be desired,
since they interfere with the self-manufacture of man. If Greek had
been in this curriculum, its best known dictum would have been
translated, "Make thyself." This journal carried to the community
that fed on it not only a complete education in all departments of
human practice and theorizing, but the more valuable and satisfying
assurance that there was nothing more to be gleaned in the universe
worth the attention of man. This panoplied its readers in
completeness. Politics, literatur