So now put on your solid wood."
In the Sunday Bible classes of the period Phelps was a perpetual
anxiety to the others, who followed closely the printed lessons, and
beheld with alarm his discursive efforts to get into freer air and
light. His remarks were the most refreshing part of the exercises,
but were outside of the safe path into which the others thought it
necessary to win him from his "speckerlations." The class were one
day on the verses concerning "God's word" being "written on the
heart," and were keeping close to the shore, under the guidance of
"Barnes's Notes," when Old Phelps made a dive to the bottom, and
remarked that he had "thought a good deal about the expression,
'God's word written on the heart,' and had been asking himself how
that was to be done; and suddenly it occurred to him (having been
much interested lately in watching the work of a photographer) that,
when a photograph is going to be taken, all that has to be done is to
put the object in position, and the sun makes the picture; and so he
rather thought that all we had got to do was to put our hearts in
place, and God would do the writin'."
Phelps's theology, like his science, is first-hand. In the woods,
one day, talk ran on the Trinity as being nowhere asserted as a
doctrine in the Bible, and some one suggested that the attempt to
pack these great and fluent mysteries into one word must always be
more or less unsatisfactory. "Ye-es," droned Phelps: "I never could
see much speckerlation in that expression the Trinity. Why, they'd a
good deal better say Legion."
The sentiment of the man about nature, or his poetic sensibility, was
frequently not to be distinguished from a natural religion, and was
always tinged with the devoutness of Wordsworth's verse. Climbing
slowly one day up the Balcony, - he was more than usually calm and
slow, - he espied an exquisite fragile flower in the crevice of a
rock, in a very lonely spot.
"It seems as if," he said, or rather dreamed out, "it seems as if the
Creator had kept something just to look at himself."
To a lady whom he had taken to Chapel Pond (a retired but rather
uninteresting spot), and who expressed a little disappointment at its
tameness, saying, of this "Why, Mr. Phelps, the principal charm of
this place seems to be its loneliness,"
"Yes," he replied in gentle and lingering tones, and its nativeness.
"It lies here just where it was born."
Rest and quiet had infinite attractions for him. A secluded opening
in the woods was a "calm spot." He told of seeing once, or rather
being in, a circular rainbow. He stood on Indian Head, overlooking
the Lower Lake, so that he saw the whole bow in the sky and the lake,
and seemed to be in the midst of it; "only at one place there was an
indentation in it, where it rested on the lake, just enough to keep
it from rolling off." This "resting" of the sphere seemed to give
him great comfort.
One Indian-summer morning in October, some ladies found the old man
sitting on his doorstep smoking a short pipe.
He gave no sign of recognition except a twinkle of the eye, being
evidently quite in harmony with the peaceful day. They stood there a
full minute before he opened his mouth: then he did not rise, but
slowly took his pipe from his mouth, and said in a dreamy way,
pointing towards the brook, -
"Do you see that tree?" indicating a maple almost denuded of leaves,
which lay like a yellow garment cast at its feet. "I've been
watching that tree all the morning. There hain't been a breath of
wind: but for hours the leaves have been falling, falling, just as
you see them now; and at last it's pretty much bare." And after a
pause, pensively: "Waal, I suppose its hour had come."
This contemplative habit of Old Phelps is wholly unappreciated by his
neighbors; but it has been indulged in no inconsiderable part of his
life. Rising after a time, he said, "Now I want you to go with me
and see my golden city I've talked so much about." He led the way to
a hill-outlook, when suddenly, emerging from the forest, the
spectators saw revealed the winding valley and its stream. He said
quietly, "There is my golden city." Far below, at their feet, they
saw that vast assemblage of birches and "popples," yellow as gold in
the brooding noonday, and slender spires rising out of the glowing
mass. Without another word, Phelps sat a long time in silent
content: it was to him, as Bunyan says, "a place desirous to be in."
Is this philosopher contented with what life has brought him?
Speaking of money one day, when we had asked him if he should do
differently if he had his life to live over again, he said, "Yes, but
not about money. To have had hours such as I have had in these
mountains, and with such men as Dr. Bushnell and Dr. Shaw and Mr.
Twichell, and others I could name, is worth all the money the world
could give." He read character very well, and took in accurately the
boy nature. "Tom" (an irrepressible, rather overdone specimen), - "
Tom's a nice kind of a boy; but he's got to come up against a
snubbin'-post one of these days." - "Boys!" he once said: "you can't
git boys to take any kinder notice of scenery. I never yet saw a boy
that would look a second time at a sunset.
