gs of which I was profoundly
ignorant. I was (of course) full of prejudices also--ecclesiastical
prejudices, class prejudices, political prejudices, caste
prejudices--all of which were as unintelligible to my new friend as they
would have been to a red Indian. He was singularly free from prejudice
of any kind--a sort of original, blank-paper mind, on which nothing had
been written save what he had consciously written there himself as the
result of his own observations of life. I knew other young Americans,
and perceived and could have pointed out characteristics which
distinguished them. But Powers was not like them. He seemed to me a sort
of Adam, a fresh, new and original _man_, unclassable and
unjudgable by any of the formulas or prejudices which served me as means
of appreciating men. Despite all this--perhaps because of all this--we
soon became great friends. I very shortly discovered that he was wholly
and entirely truthful. His "yes" was _yes,_ his "no" was _no_;
and not only that, but what is much rarer still, his "five" or "six" was
not five and a quarter or six and a half, but _five_ or _six_.
I remember in him then what I recognized after many, many years in later
life, and what is often so amusing a characteristic in simple, upright
and truthful minds--the notion that on occasion he could be deep enough
to outwit the cunning of the unscrupulous, whereas his loyal
unsuspiciousness of evil was such that he might have been cheated by the
first shallow rogue who chose to exercise his vulpine craft against him.

When I reached Cincinnati I found him intimate with my brother, and a
favorite with my mother, who had formed a high opinion both of his
character and of his talents. The latter had already very markedly
manifested themselves in that direction which finally decided his career
in life. Yet there was little of that dreamy and enthusiastic worship
for the abstract beautiful which is generally supposed to be the marking
characteristic of the artistic temperament. But he had a wonderful
faculty of executing with his hands whatever his mind had conceived, and
a mind singularly active in invention and in devising means for the
execution of a mechanical end. Had circumstances not made him a
sculptor, he might have been--probably would have been--a successful
inventor, mechanician or engineer. Throughout life he was an eminently
and specially _practical_ man--a man whose tendency was not to
dream, but to _do_. Tha