of the lore of Greece, Rome, the Orient, and also of modern peoples was as familiar to him as the contents of the morning papers.  With acumen he selected and his memory retained; the cells of his capacious brain somehow held it ready for instant use.  With good discrimination he could touch lightly or discourse profoundly as occasion required, his learning and insight always telling effectively, either at the breakfast-table of the plain citizen, or in the pages of the school text-book.  “John,” said such a plain man the other day to a friend who also had been in touch with Fiske, “the biggest thing that ever came into your life or mine was when that broad thinker familiarly darkened our doors.”  The two men stood reverently under John Fiske’s portrait, the autograph signature underneath seeming in a way to connect the living with the dead, acknowledging the force of the personality which had made real to them as nothing else had ever done the deepest and finest things.

John Fiske was often a guest in my home and I have sat, though less frequently, with him in his library in Berkeley Street in Cambridge, the flowers from the conservatory sending their perfumes among the crowded books and the south wind breathing pleasantly from the garden which had been Longfellow’s, in the rear, to the garden of Howells in front.  His passion for music was scarcely less than his interest in speculation and history.  He knew well the great composers, and had himself composed.  Though the master of no instrument, he could touch the piano with feeling.  He had a pleasant baritone voice, and nothing gave him more refreshment after a week of study or lecturing than to pour himself out in song.  His accompanist had need not only of great technical skill but of stout vertebrae, and strong wrists; for hours at a time the piano stool must be occupied while the difficult melodies of various lands were unriddled and interpreted.  Those were interesting afternoons when, dropping his pen, he plunged into music as a strong confident swimmer plunges into the stream which he especially loves, interpreting with warm feeling Mendelssohn and Beethoven, wandering unlost in the vocal labyrinths of Dvorak and Wagner, but never happier than when interpreting the emotions of simple folk-songs, or some noble Shakespearian lyrics like “Who is Sylvia, what is she, that all the swains commend her?” Music stimulated him to vivacity and in the pauses would come outbursts of abandon.  One day the pet dog of a daughter of mine ensconced himself unawares under the sofa and was disrespectfully napping while John Fiske sang.  In a pause the philosopher broke into an animated declamation over some matter while standing near the sofa, whereat the pug thinking himself challenged tore out to the front with sudden violent barks.  The two confronted each other, the pug frantically vindicating his dignity while the philosopher on his side fixing his eye upon the interrupter declaimed and gesticulated.  As to volubility and sonorousness