that it was not a mere passing fancy.

I had lodgings in the village, and drove out mornings for the dictations,
but often came out again afoot on pleasant afternoons; for he was not
much occupied with social matters, and there was opportunity for quiet,
informing interviews. There was a woods path to the Upton place, and it
was a walk through a fairyland. A part of the way was through such a
growth of beech timber as I have never seen elsewhere: tall, straight,
mottled trees with an undergrowth of laurel, the sunlight sifting
through; one found it easy to expect there storybook ladies, wearing
crowns and green mantles, riding on white palfreys. Then came a more
open way, an abandoned grass-grown road full of sunlight and perfume; and
this led to a dim, religious place, a natural cathedral, where the
columns were stately pine-trees branching and meeting at the top: a
veritable temple in which it always seemed that music was about to play.
You crossed a brook and climbed a little hill, and pushed through a hedge
into a place more open, and the house stood there among the trees.

The days drifted along, one a good deal like another, except, as the
summer deepened, the weather became warmer, the foliage changed, a drowsy
haze gathered along the valleys and on the mountain-side. He sat more
often now in a large rocking-chair, and generally seemed to be looking
through half-dosed lids toward the Monadnock heights, that were always
changing in aspect-in color and in form--as cloud shapes drifted by or
gathered in those lofty hollows. White and yellow butterflies hovered
over the grass, and there were some curious, large black ants--the
largest I have ever seen and quite harmless--that would slip in and out
of the cracks on the veranda floor, wholly undisturbed by us. Now and
then a light flutter of wind would come murmuring up from the trees
below, and when the apple-bloom was falling there would be a whirl of
white and pink petals that seemed a cloud of smaller butterflies.

On June 1st I find in my note-book this entry:

Warm and pleasant. The dictation about Grant continues; a great
privilege to hear this foremost man, of letters review his
associations with that foremost man of arms. He remained seated
today, dressed in white as usual, a large yellow pansy in his
buttonhole, his white hair ruffled by the breeze. He wears his worn
morocco slippers with black hose; sits in the rocker, smoking and