voice.  As I sat painting, I would see the gray eagle come down, with his long cycloidal swoop, skimming along the surface of the water, and catch, as he passed, the trout that sunned itself on the surface; or the osprey seizing it with his direct plunge into the lake, from which, after a struggle that lasted sometimes a minute, the only sign of his presence being the agitated water, he would emerge with the fish in his claws and sail aloft, hurrying to escape to the forest with his prey lest the eagle, always watching from the upper air, should rob him of his hard-earned booty.  Once I saw the eagle make the mighty plunge from far above, the frightened osprey dropping the fish to escape the shock, and the eagle catching it in midair as it fell.  The little incidents of woodland life took the place of all other diversions and left no hour void of interest.  I broke up the camp only when the autumn was so far advanced that it was uncomfortable to live in the open air.  It is difficult for one who has not had the experience to understand the fascination of this absolute solitude, or the impressiveness of the silence, unbroken sometimes through whole days.  I had absolutely no desire for human society, and I broke camp with reluctance, to return to my studio at Cambridge.

The next summer the party was formed which led to the foundation of the Adirondack Club, and the excursion it made is commemorated by Emerson in his poem “The Adirondacs.”  The company included Emerson, Agassiz, Dr. Howe, Professor Jeffries Wyman, John Holmes,—­who became as fond as I was of this wild life,—­Judge Hoar (later Attorney-General in the cabinet of President Grant), Horatio Woodman, Dr. Binney, and myself.  Of this company, as I write, I am the only survivor.  I did my best to enroll Longfellow in the party, but, though he was for a moment hesitating, I think the fact that Emerson was going with a gun settled him in the determination to decline.  “Is it true that Emerson is going to take a gun?” he asked me; and when I said that he had finally decided to do so, he ejaculated, “Then somebody will be shot!” and would talk no more of going.

Perhaps the final reason, or that which would in any case have indisposed him to join the company, was his want of sympathy with Emerson.  Emerson and he were in fact of antagonistic intellectuality, both in the quality of the exquisite courtesy which distinguished them equally, and in the fibre of intellectual working and the quality of mental activity.  Longfellow was of the most refined social culture, disciplined to self-control under all circumstances and difficulties; sensitive in the highest degree to the forms of courtesy, and incapable by nature as by training of an act or word which could offend the sensibilities of even a discourteous interlocutor,—­capable at worst of an indignant silence, but incapable of invading the personality of another; not serene, but of an invincible tranquillity; with no sympathy for mystery