There is the small writing-table, and there is the plain
armchair in which he sat by it and worked out those creations of
fancy which have excited such interest through the world. That
square foot over against this chair, where his paper lay, is the
focus, the point of incidence and reflection, of thoughts that
pencilled outward, like sun-rays, until their illumination reached
the antipodes,--thoughts that brought a pleasant shining to the sun-
burnt face of the Australian shepherd as he watched his flock at
noon from under the shadow of a stunted tree; thoughts which made a
cheery fellowship at night for the Hudson Bay hunter, in his snow-
buried cabin on the Saskatchiwine. The books of this little inner
library were the body-guard of his genius, chosen to be nearest him
in the outsallyings of his imagination. Here is a little
conversational closet, with a window in it to let in the leaf-sifted
light and air--a small recess large enough for a couple of chairs or
so, which he called a "Speak-a-bit." Here is something so near his
personality that it almost startles you like a sudden apparition of
himself. It is a glass case containing the clothes he last wore on
earth,--the large-buttoned, blue coat, the plaid trousers, the
broad-brimmed hat, and heavy, thick-soled shoes which he had on when
he came in from his last walk to lay himself down and die.

On signing my name in the register, I was affected at a coincidence
which conveyed a tribute of respect to the memory of the great
author of striking significance, while it recorded the painful
catastrophe which has broken over upon the American Republic. It
was a sad sight to me to see the profane and suicidal antagonisms
which have rent it in twain brought to the shrine of this great
memory and graven upon its sacred tablet as it were with the
murdering dagger's point. New and bad initials! The father and
patriot Washington would have wept tears of blood to have read them
here,--to have read them anywhere, bearing such deplorable meaning.
They were U.S.A. and C.S.A., as it were chasing each other up and
down the pages of the visitors' register. Sad, sad was the sight--
sadder, in a certain sense, than the smoke-wreaths of the Tuscarora
and Alabama ploughing the broad ocean with their keels. U.S.A. and
C.S.A.! What initials for Americans to write, with the precious
memories of a common history and a common weal still held to their
hearts--to write here or anyw