they stood about equal.  I am bound to say the pug prevailed.  John Fiske retired in discomfiture while the pug was carried off in triumph in the arms of his little mistress.  He had fairly barked the great man down.  I once shared with him the misery of being a butt.  In St. Louis in those days the symposium was held in honour, and particularly N.O.  Nelson, the well-known profit-sharing captain of industry, was the entertainer of select groups whose geniality was stimulated by modest potations of Anheuser-Bush, in St. Louis always the Castor and Pollux in every convivial firmament.  Such a symposium was once held in special honour of Dr. Edward Waldo Emerson, a transient visitor.  “Dr. Emerson,” said a guest, “in the diary of your father just edited by you occurs a passage which needs illumination.  ’Edward and I tried this morning for three quarters of an hour to get the calf into the barn without success.  The Irish girl stuck her finger into his mouth and got the calf in in two minutes.  I like folks that can do things.’  Now,” said the guest, “we all know what became of Emerson, we all know what became of Edward, for you are here to-night, but what became of the Irish girl and the calf?” Dr. Emerson laughingly explained the probable fate of the girl and the calf, and in the hilarity that followed, the question arose as to why the Irish girl’s finger had been so persuasive.  I, city-bred and green as grass as to country lore, rashly attempted to explain; the inserted finger gave a good purchase on the calf which in its pain became at once tractable, but the men present who had been farm-boys, with loud laughter ridiculed the suggestion.  Did I not know that nature had provided a conduit through which the needed sustenance was conveyed from the maternal udder, and that it was quite possible to delude the unsuspecting calf into the belief that the slyly inserted finger was that conduit?  The triumph of the Irish girl was explained, and I sank back, covered with confusion.  Fiske, however, blurted out:  “Why, I never should have thought of that in all my life,” whereat he too became the target of ridicule.

I never saw John Fiske happier than once at Concord.  Our host had invited us for a day and had prepared a programme that only Concord could furnish.  The prelude was a performance of the Andante to a Sonata of Rubinstein, Opus 12, rendered exquisitely by the daughter of our host.  I saw the great frame of my fellow-guest heave with emotion while his breath came almost in sobs as his spirit responded to the music.  Then came a canoe-trip on the river to which John Fiske joyfully assented though some of the rest of us were not without apprehension.  Fiske in a canoe was a ticklish proposition, but there he was at last, comfortably recumbent, his head propped up on cushions, serenely at ease though a very narrow margin intervened between water-line and gunwale.  The performer of the Sonata, who was as deft at the paddle as she was at the piano, served as his pilot