the autumn was so far advanced that it was uncomfortable to
live in the open air. It is difficult for one who has not had the
experience to understand the fascination of this absolute solitude, or
the impressiveness of the silence, unbroken sometimes through whole
days. I had absolutely no desire for human society, and I broke camp
with reluctance, to return to my studio at Cambridge.

The next summer the party was formed which led to the foundation of
the Adirondack Club, and the excursion it made is commemorated by
Emerson in his poem "The Adirondacs." The company included Emerson,
Agassiz, Dr. Howe, Professor Jeffries Wyman, John Holmes,--who
became as fond as I was of this wild life,--Judge Hoar (later
Attorney-General in the cabinet of President Grant), Horatio Woodman,
Dr. Binney, and myself. Of this company, as I write, I am the only
survivor. I did my best to enroll Longfellow in the party, but, though
he was for a moment hesitating, I think the fact that Emerson was
going with a gun settled him in the determination to decline. "Is it
true that Emerson is going to take a gun?" he asked me; and when
I said that he had finally decided to do so, he ejaculated, "Then
somebody will be shot!" and would talk no more of going.

Perhaps the final reason, or that which would in any case have
indisposed him to join the company, was his want of sympathy with
Emerson. Emerson and he were in fact of antagonistic intellectuality,
both in the quality of the exquisite courtesy which distinguished them
equally, and in the fibre of intellectual working and the quality of
mental activity. Longfellow was of the most refined social culture,
disciplined to self-control under all circumstances and difficulties;
sensitive in the highest degree to the forms of courtesy, and
incapable by nature as by training of an act or word which could
offend the sensibilities of even a discourteous interlocutor,--capable
at worst of an indignant silence, but incapable of invading the
personality of another; not serene, but of an invincible tranquillity;
with no sympathy for mystery or obscurity; supremely above the general
and commonplace by the exquisite refinement to which he carried the
expression of what the general and commonplace world felt and thought;
remote from roughness in the form or the substance of his thought; in
short, the _ne plus ultra_ of refinement as man and poet. Emerson was
too serene ever to be discourteous, and was capable of