He came among us, indeed, like a
statesman rather than like a teacher. The brief interviews we had with
him were regarded with a sort of terror, but produced, in me at least,
an almost fanatical respect and admiration. And yet I had no reason to
suppose that he was not, like all of us, subject to the law of life and
pilgrimage, though one could not conceive of him as having to enter the
arena of life again as a helpless child!
On this occasion I was summoned suddenly to his presence. I found him,
as usual, bent over his work, which he did not intermit, but merely
motioned me to be seated. Presently he put away his papers from him, and
turned round upon me. One of the disconcerting things about him was the
fact that his thought had a peculiarly compelling tendency, and that
while he read one's mind in a flash, his own thoughts remained very
nearly impenetrable. On this occasion he commended me for my work and my
relations with my fellow-students, adding that I had made rapid
progress. He then said, "I have two questions to ask you. Have you any
special relations, either with any one whom you have left behind you on
earth, or with any one with whom you have made acquaintance since you
quitted it, which you desire to pursue?"
I told him, which was the truth, that since my stay in the College I had
become so much absorbed in the studies of the place that I seemed to
have became strangely oblivious of my external friends, but that it was
more a suspension than a destruction of would-be relations.
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