e
senior member of the firm, who had come down to our generation from a
legendary past and with a striking resemblance of head and general air
to Benjamin Franklin. Mr. Forest, under whose more particular attention
I languished, had lasted on from a plainer age and, having formed, by
the legend, in their youth, the taste of two or three of our New York
uncles--though for what it could have been goodness only knew--was still
of a _trempe_ to whack in the fine old way at their nephews and sons. I
see him aloft, benevolent and hard, mildly massive, in a black dress
coat and trousers and a white neckcloth that should have figured, if it
didn't, a frill, and on the highest rostrum of our experience, whence he
comes back to me as the dryest of all our founts of knowledge, though
quite again as a link with far-off manners and forms and as the most
"historic" figure we had ever had to do with. W. J., as I distinguish,
had in truth scarcely to do with him--W. J. lost again on upper floors,
in higher classes, in real pursuits, and connecting me, in an indirect
and almost deprecated manner, with a strange, curly, glossy, an anointed
and bearded, Mr. Quackenboss, the junior partner, who conducted the
classical department and never whacked--only sent down his subjects,
with every confidence, to his friend. I make out with clearness that Mr.
Forest was awful and arid, and yet that somehow, by the same stroke, we
didn't, under his sway, go in terror, only went exceedingly in want;
even if in want indeed of I scarce (for myself) know what, since it
might well have been enough for me, in so resounding an air, to escape
with nothing worse than a failure of thrill. If I didn't feel that
interest I must clearly not have inspired it, and I marvel afresh, under
these memories, at the few points at which I appear to have touched
constituted reality. That, however, is a different connection
altogether, and I read back into the one I have been noting much of the
chill, or at least the indifference, of a foreseen and foredoomed
detachment: it was during that winter that I began to live by
anticipation in another world and to feel our uneasy connection with New
York loosen beyond recovery. I remember for how many months, when the
rupture took place, we had been to my particular consciousness virtually
in motion; though I regain at the same time the impression of more
experience on the spot than had marked our small previous history: this,
however,