bors was shadowy or incomplete
in his memory. He could refer to every trifling incident of the tour,
recall every road and path that we had followed, every field and ledge
that we had examined, particularize the day of the week on which we had
dined or supped at such a tavern, and mention the name of the landlord.
I asked him how he was able to remember such minutiae. He replied, that
it was his custom, on going to bed, to call up, in the darkness and
stillness, all the incidents of the day's experience, in their proper
order, and cause them to move before him like a diorama through a
spiritual morning, noon, and evening. "It has often appeared to me," he
said, "that in this purely mental process I see objects more distinctly
than I behold them in the reality."

But his memory doubtless gained an immense additional advantage from his
habitual seclusion, from his unconcern with the distracting customs of
society, and, most of all, from the imperturbable abstraction under
which he studied and observed. With him there was no blending of
collateral subjects, no permitted intrusion of things irrelevant or
trivial, so that the channels of his thoughts were always single,
deep, and traceable. It was a mental straightforwardness and
conscientiousness, as rare, perhaps, as moral rectitude itself.

In diet, Percival was the most abstemious person I ever knew. His health
was uniformly good,--the specimens of a geologist, when he collects them
himself, being as favorable to digestion and appetite as the pebbles to
a chicken; yet, I am persuaded, my companion in no case violated the
golden rule of leaving the table unsated. No matter how long had been
his fast, he showed no impatience of hunger, made no remark upon the
excellence of any dish, found fault with nothing, or, at most, only
seemed to miss drinkable coffee and good bread, articles seldom to be
met with in the country. He ate slowly, selecting his food with the
discrimination which ought to belong to a chemist or physiologist, and
then thought no more about it. Alcoholic drinks he never tasted, except
an occasional glass of wine, to which his attention perhaps had been
called on account of its age or superior excellence. Even then it
was not the flavor which interested him, so much as the history,
geographical and other.

Peculiar as he was in his own habits of diet, he offered no strictures
upon the practice of others, however different, unless it ran into
hurtful exce