A WEEK ON WALDEN'S BIDGE. 177 



ing full upon them, and the green forest 

 fringing them above and sweeping away 

 from them below. 



It was a breathless clamber up the rocks 

 again, tired and poorly off as I was, but 1 

 reached the top with one hand full of rho- 

 dodendrons (it seemed a shame to pick them, 

 and a shame to leave them), and in half an 

 hour we were driving homeward, our day's 

 work done ; while my seatmate, who, besides 

 being preacher, lawyer, surveyor, and farmer, 

 was also a mystic and a saint, — though he 

 would have refused the word, — fell into a 

 strain of reminiscence, appropriate to the 

 hour, about the inner life of the soul, its 

 hopes, its struggles, and its joys. I listened 

 in reverent silence. The passion for per- 

 fection is not yet so common as to have 

 become commonplace, and one need not be 

 certain of a theory in order to admire a 

 practice. He had already told me who his 

 father was, and I had ceased to wonder at 

 his using now and then a choice phrase. 



My friend (he will allow me that word, I 

 am sure) had given me a day of days, and 

 with it a new idea of this mountain world ; 

 where the visitor finds hills and valleys. 



