has given me a copy of a work of his which seems to me not wanting in suggestiveness, and which I hope I shall be able to make some use of in my records by and by.  I said the other day that he had good solid prejudices, which is true, and I like him none the worse for it; but he has also opinions more or less original, valuable, probable, fanciful; fantastic, or whimsical, perhaps, now and then; which he promulgates at table somewhat in the tone of imperial edicts.  Another thing I like about him is, that he takes a certain intelligent interest in pretty much everything that interests other people.  I asked him the other day what he thought most about in his wide range of studies.

—­Sir,—­said he,—­I take stock in everything that concerns anybody.  Humani nihil,—­you know the rest.  But if you ask me what is my specialty, I should say, I applied myself more particularly to the contemplation of the Order of Things.

—­A pretty wide subject,—­I ventured to suggest.

—­Not wide enough, sir,—­not wide enough to satisfy the desire of a mind which wants to get at absolute truth, without reference to the empirical arrangements of our particular planet and its environments.  I want to subject the formal conditions of space and time to a new analysis, and project a possible universe outside of the Order of Things.  But I have narrowed myself by studying the actual facts of being.  By and by—­by and by—­perhaps—­perhaps.  I hope to do some sound thinking in heaven—­if I ever get there,—­he said seriously, and it seemed to me not irreverently.

—­I rather like that,—­I said.  I think your telescopic people are, on the whole, more satisfactory than your microscopic ones.

—­My left-hand neighbor fidgeted about a little in his chair as I said this.  But the young man sitting not far from the Landlady, to whom my attention had been attracted by the expression of his eyes, which seemed as if they saw nothing before him, but looked beyond everything, smiled a sort of faint starlight smile, that touched me strangely; for until that moment he had appeared as if his thoughts were far away, and I had been questioning whether he had lost friends lately, or perhaps had never had them, he seemed so remote from our boarding-house life.  I will inquire about him, for he interests me, and I thought he seemed interested as I went on talking.

—­No,—­I continued,—­I don’t want to have the territory of a man’s mind fenced in.  I don’t want to shut out the mystery of the stars and the awful hollow that holds them.  We have done with those hypaethral temples, that were open above to the heavens, but we can have attics and skylights to them.  Minds with skylights,—­yes,—­stop, let us see if we can’t get something out of that.