to what is your friend laughing at and the story of how my strength had me at the third wall was told i quite with you said the one that had been overtaken like myself from the heat did the poet get to the top yes he did i replied sharply and did the view you for the walk there is no view m answered only a rim ot pearl coloured mountains the edge of the world they seemed and an intense silence that isn t enough to climb a thousand feet for said the of the two but it wasn t for the view he went there i replied indignantly but for the gods for the gods r and why not are there no gods but your s my question was not answered and at the end of an awkward silence we talked about indifferent things till we came to where we happened to be at the same inn and m suggested that we should ask the to dine with us having in mind not the dinner but the supper of ideas which he was preparing for them and that supper began with the dinner even before the arrival of the they were being told that was the most celebrated mountain in all and enveloped in the most beautiful it distressed me to see m neglect his dinner and i insisted that he must finish his chop before he his and showed the he had made of the shaped lake he ate for a little while but it was impossible to restrain him from telling how had seen a fairy face rise above the waters of the lake and had after it whether the and for how long he had enjoyed her he did not tell only that when rose to tiie again he was an old man old as the and ihe rocks of the world but his youth was given back to him by enchantment and of the adventure nothing remained except his snow white hair which was so and became him so well that it had not been altered back to its original colour it was on this mountain that had found the � horse and m told us in language which still rings in my memory oi the great battle of the ford and the giant of the he spoke to us of the manhood and of the exploits of and the children of more admirable he said as types more noble and inspiring than the o� little saints who came later and cursed their memories this last passage seemed to the they looked but m s soul refuses to recognize the miserable of certain christian he was think g of the smith who lived in the mountain and who the their and when that story had been related he remembered that he had not told than of the most remote and most spiritual of all the god of the feast of age the of hail and farewell the mysteries and how anyone who partook of that feast became himself immortal it is a great grief to me that no single note was taken at the time of that extraordinary evening spent with m in the inn at eating hard and drinking stale beer the fare was poor but what thoughts and what eloquence a short hand writer should have been by me she is never with us when she should be i might have gone to my room and taken notes but no note was taken alas a change came into the faces of the as they listened to m y even their attitudes seemed to become noble m did not see them he was too absorbed in his ideas but i saw them and thought the while of barren rocks that the sun for a moment and then not satisfied with that i thought how at midday a ray finds its way even into the darkest valley we had remained in the valley of the senses � our weak flesh had kept us there but m had ascended the mountain of the spirit and a divine light was about him it is the mission of some men to enable their fellows to live beyond themselves m possesses this power in an extraordinary degree and we were lifted above ourselves my memory of that evening is one which time is powerless to and though years have passed by the moment is remembered when m said that religion must always be which makes a far off land sacred rather than the earth and then he denied that the genius of the had ever owed any of its inspiration to teaching its our talk is always reported and in these memories of m there must be a great deal of myself it sounds so like myself that i hesitate to attribute this sentence to him yet it seems to me that i can still hear him speaking it � the folk tales of have ever lain nearer to the hearts of the people than those of whatever there is of worth in song and story is woven into them handed down from the dim ages and did i not hear him say that soon the children of a new race shall roll out their thoughts on the before your very doors o priests calling your flocks from your dark and to a temple not built with hands sweet with the and incense of from your call them to the of the hills soon to be lit up as of old soon to be blazing of over the land these heroes i see emerging have they not come forth in every land and race when there was need here too they will arise my ears retain memories of his voice when he cried ah my you will have to fight and suffer you must endure loneliness the coldness of the of love warmed only by the bright 