and business of a mind so great paired with a heart so simple.

"My idea is this," he says, "subject to an exception which I will
state in a moment." Taking up his exception, he makes it so lucid,
so pregnant, so comprehensive, so irresistible, that it seems to us
the whole and satisfying dogma; and then, suddenly turning it
inside-outward, he reveals the seams, and we remember that it was
only a trifling nexus in the rational series. He returns to his main
thesis, and other counterpoising arguments occur to him. He outlines
them, with delicious AEsopian sagacity. "Of course this analysis is
only quantitative, not qualitative," he says. "But I will now
restate my position with all the necessary reservations, and we'll
see if it will hold water."

We smile, and look at each other slyly, in the sheer happiness of
enjoying a perfect work of art. He must be a mere quintain, a poor
lifeless block, who does not revel in such an exhibition, where
those two rare qualities of mind--honesty and agility--are locked in
one.

Of course--it is hardly necessary to say--we do not always agree
with everything he says. But we could not disagree with _him_; for
we see that his broad, shrewd, troubled spirit could take no other
view, arising out of the very multitude and swarm and pressure of
his thought. Those who plod diligently and narrowly along a country
lane may sometimes reach the destination less fatigued than the more
conscientious and passionate traveller who quarters the fields and
beats the bounds, intent to leave no covert unscrutinized. But in
him we see and love and revere something rare and precious, not
often found in our present way of life; in matters concerning the
happiness of others, a devoted spirit of unrivalled wisdom; in those
pertaining to himself, a child's unblemished innocence. The
perplexities of others are his daily study; his own pleasures, a
constant surprise.

[Illustration]

GOING TO PHILADELPHIA

I

Every intelligent New Yorker should be compelled, once in so often,
to run over to Philadelphia and spend a few days quietly and
observantly prowling.

Any lover of America is poor indeed unless he has savoured and
meditated the delicious contrast of these two cities, separated by
so few miles and yet by a whole world of philosophy and metaphysics.
But he is a mere tyro of the two who has only made the voyage by the
P.R.R. The correct way to go is by the Reading, which makes none of