, which seems to me to have a good deal of truth
in it.

The other elderly personage, the old man with iron-gray hair and large
round spectacles, sits at my right at table. He is a retired college
officer, a man of books and observation, and himself an author. Magister
Artium is one of his titles on the College Catalogue, and I like best to
speak of him as the Master, because he has a certain air of authority
which none of us feel inclined to dispute. He 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 sta