the veil they are, to the something beyond, but always questioning, hardly concluding, and with no theories to limit his thought or bend it to preconceived solutions.  Knowing that all he saw in this undefiled natural world, this virgin mother of all life (for around Follansbee Pond, at the time we went, there was the primeval woodland, where the lumberer had not yet penetrated, and the grove kept still the immaculacy of the most ancient days), that all this was the mask of things, he was ever on the watch if perchance he might catch some hint of the secret,—­secret never to be discovered, and therefore more passionately sought.  This seems to me contained in “The Adirondacs” as in no other work of the philosopher.  And to me the study of the great student was the dominant interest of the occasion.  I was Agassiz’s boatman on demand, for while all the others had their personal guides and attendants, I was his; but often when Emerson wanted a boat I managed to provide for Agassiz with one of the unoccupied guides, and take the place of Emerson’s own guide.  Thus Emerson and I had many hours alone on the lake and in the wood.  He seemed to be a living question, perpetually interrogating his impressions of all that there was to be seen.  The rest of us were always at the surface of things,—­even the naturalists were only engaged with their anatomy; but Emerson in the forest, or looking at the sunset from the lake, seemed to be looking through the phenomena, studying them by their reflections on an inner speculum.

In such a great solitude, stripped of the social conventions and seeing men as they are, mind seems open to mind as it is quite impossible for it to be in society, even the most informal.  Agassiz remarked, one day, when a little personal question had shown the limitations of character of one of the company, that he had always found in his Alpine experiences, when the company were living on terms of compulsory intimacy, that men found each other out quickly.  And so we found it in the Adirondacks:  disguises were soon dropped, and one saw the real characters of his comrades as it was impossible to see them in society.  Conventions faded out, masks became transparent, and for good or for ill the man stood naked before the questioning eye,—­pure personality.  I think I gathered more insight into the character of my companions in our greener Arden, in the two or three weeks’ meetings of the club, than all our lives in the city could have given me.

And Emerson was such a study as can but rarely be given any one.  The crystalline limpidity of his character, free from all conventions, prejudices, or personal color, gave a facility for study of the man, limited only by the range of vision of the student.  How far my vision was competent for this study is not for me to decide; so far as it went I profited, and so far as my experience of men goes he is unique, not so much from intellectual power, for I should be indisposed to accept his as the mind of the greatest