If you will look westward now across New England about seven o'clock in the evening you will see a light again in my study window—a dim light there on the bank of the great river—dim even to the eye of faith. If your eye is sharp enough you will see me sitting there by my lamp, nibbling at books or papers or dozing in my chair wrapped in deep meditation. If you could penetrate my mind you would see that I am often thinking of you and wondering how your life is going there at Harvard and what the future has in store for you. I found my path from the study grass grown, nearly obliterated. It made me sad. Soon, soon, I said, all the paths I have made in this world will be overgrown and neglected. I hope you may keep some of them open. The paths I have made in literature, I hope you may keep open and make others of your own.

Your affectionate father, J. B.

It was always a source of disappointment to Father that I did not write more, that I could not carry on his work—but this was more than he should have expected. He was an essayist, fired with a literary ambition that never faltered or grew dim for over sixty years. Once I wrote a brief introduction to a hunting story that won a prize in a sporting journal and I can never forget how pleased Father was with it—"It filled me with emotion," he said, "it brought tears to my eyes—write a whole piece like that and I'll send it to the Atlantic."

How he loved the telling phrase, the turn of words that was apt and made the form and substance one! I know I had a little silver cup or mug that I used at table, and when I saw my first locomotive bell slowly ringing I watched it and exclaimed, "Cup open bell." How Father did laugh and repeat it to me afterward—the childish way of expressing the strange and new in terms of the familiar and old. The small son of a friend of Father's when he first saw the ocean exclaimed, "Oh, the great rainy!" and Father would laugh over this expression and slap his sides in glee. The homely expressions always pleased him. One day some children came to see him. They had been sent by their parents with strict instructions to see "the man himself," and when they asked Father if he was "the man himself" he had a good laugh and told them he guessed he was. He always liked to tell and act out the story of the man who went down into the cellar for a pitcher of milk. In going down he fell down the stone stairs and bruised himself painfully. As he lay groaning and rubbing himself he heard his wife call, "John, did you break the pitcher?" Looking about in his anguish he saw the pitcher, unbroken. "No," he called back, gritting his teeth, "but, by thunder, I will," and seizing it by the handle he savagely smashed it over the stones. And Father understood exactly how he felt.

The deep interest he took in self-knowledge is well shown in the following letter:

Riverby, Nov. 17, 1897.

MY DEAR JULIAN,

I was very sorry to hear of that "D" and "E." I was probably quite as much cut up as you were. I have been melancholy ever since I heard of it. But you will feel better by and by.... One thing you are greatly lacking in, as I suppose most boys are—self-knowledge. You do not seem to know what you can or cannot do, or when you have failed or succeeded. You have always been fond of trying things beyond your powers (I the same) as in the case of the boat. I think you over estimate yourself, which I never did. You thought you ought to have had an "A" in English, and were not prepared for your low mark in French and German. Do a little self-examination and nip the bud of conceit; get a fair estimate and make it too low rather than too high. I am sure I know my own weak points, see if you can't find yours. That saying of the ancients, "know thyself," is to be pondered daily. I always keep my expectations down, so that I am not disappointed if I get a "D" or an "E." My success in life has been far beyond my expectations. I know several authors who think they have not had their just deserts; but it is their own fault. I have just read this in Macaulay: "If a man brings away from Cambridge {where he graduated in eighteen hundred and twenty-two} self-knowledge, accuracy of mind and habits of strong intellectual exertion he has got the best the college can give him." That is what I think too.

Your loving father,

J. B.