rlight 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.

One-story intellects, two--story intellects, three story intellects with
skylights. All fact--collectors, who have no aim beyond their facts, are
one-story men. Two-story men compare, reason, generalize, using the
labors of the fact-collectors as well as their own. Three-story men
idealize, imagine, predict; their best illumination comes from above,
through the skylight. There are minds with large ground floors, that can
store an infinite amount of knowledge; some librarians, for instance, who
know enough of books to help other people, without being able to make
much other use of their knowledge, have intellects of this class. Your
great working lawyer has two spacious stories; his mind is clear, because
his mental floors are large, and he has room to arrange his thoughts so
that he can get at them,--facts below, principles above, and all in
ordered series; poets are often narrow below, incapable of clear
statement, and with small power of consecutive reasoning, but full of
light, if sometimes rather bare of furniture, in the attics.

--The old Master smiled. I think he suspects himself of a three-story
intellect, and I don't feel sure that he is n't right.

--Is it dark meat or white meat you will be helped to?--said the
Landlady, addressing the Master.

--Dark meat for me, always,--he answered. Then turning to me, he began
one of those monologues of his, such as that which put the Member of the
Haouse asleep the other day.

--It 's pretty much the same in men and women and in books and
everything, that it is in turkeys and chickens. Why, take your poets,
now, say Browning and Tennyson. Don't you think you can say which is the
dark-meat and which is the white-meat poet