It was at
Carnegie Hall, and the great place was jammed. As he stood before that
vast, shouting audience, I wondered if he was remembering that night,
forty years before in San Francisco, when his lecture career had begun.
We hoped he might speak of it, but he did not do so.
In May the dictations were transferred to Dublin, New Hampshire, to the
long veranda of the Upton House, on the Monadnock slope. He wished to
continue our work, he said; so the stenographer and myself were presently
located in the village, and drove out each morning, to sit facing one of
the rarest views in all New England, while he talked of everything and
anything that memory or fancy suggested. We had begun in his bedroom,
but the glorious outside was too compelling.
The long veranda was ideal. He was generally ready when we arrived, a
luminous figure in white flannels, pacing up and down before a background
of sky and forest, blue lake, and distant hills. When it stormed we
would go inside to a bright fire. The dictation ended, he would ask his
secretary to play the orchestrelle, which at great expense had been
freighted up from New York. In that high situation, the fire and the
music and the stormbeat seemed to lift us very far indeed from reality.
Pages:
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344