."

The sentiment of the man about nature, or his poetic sensibility, was
frequently not to be distinguished from a natural religion, and was
always tinged with the devoutness of Wordsworth's verse. Climbing slowly
one day up the Balcony,--he was more than usually calm and slow,--he
espied an exquisite fragile flower in the crevice of a rock, in a very
lonely spot.

"It seems as if," he said, or rather dreamed out, "it seems as if the
Creator had kept something just to look at himself."

To a lady whom he had taken to Chapel Pond (a retired but rather
uninteresting spot), and who expressed a little disappointment at its
tameness, saying, of this "Why, Mr. Phelps, the principal charm of this
place seems to be its loneliness."

"Yes," he replied in gentle and lingering tones, and its nativeness. "It
lies here just where it was born."

Rest and quiet had infinite attractions for him. A secluded opening in
the woods was a "calm spot." He told of seeing once, or rather being in,
a circular rainbow. He stood on Indian Head, overlooking the Lower Lake,
so that he saw the whole bow in the sky and the lake, and seemed to be
in the midst of it; "only at one place there was an indentation in it,
where it rested on the lake, just enough to keep it from rolling off."
This "resting" of the sphere seemed to give him great comfort.

One Indian-summer morning in October, some ladies found the old man
sitting on his doorstep smoking a short pipe.

He gave no sign of recognition except a twinkle of the eye, being
evidently quite in harmony with the peaceful day. They stood there a
full minute before he opened his mouth: then he did not rise, but slowly
took his pipe from his mouth, and said in a dreamy way, pointing towards
the brook,--

"Do you see that tree?" indicating a maple almost denuded of leaves,
which lay like a yellow garment cast at its feet. "I've been watching
that tree all the morning. There hain't been a breath of wind: but for
hours the leaves have been falling, falling, just as you see them now;
and at last it's pretty much bare." And after a pause, pensively: "Waal,
I suppose its hour had come."

This contemplative habit of Old Phelps is wholly unappreciated by his
neighbors; but it has been indulged in no inconsiderable part of his
life. Rising after a time, he said, "Now I want you to go with me and
see my golden city I've talked so much about." He led the way to a
hill-outlook, when suddenly, emerging from