Berkeley, California.

September 3, 19—.  

 

Here I am, back in the old quarters once more, with the old afternoon climb across the campus and up into the sky, up to the old rooms, the old books, and the old view. You poor fog-begirt Dane Kempton, could you but have lounged with me on the window couch, an hour past, and watched the light pass out of the day through the Golden Gate and the night creep over the Berkeley Hills and down out of the east! Why should you linger on there in London town! We grow away from each other, it seems—you with your wonder-singing, I with my joyful² science.

 

Poesy and economics! Alack! alack! How did I escape you, Dane, when mind and mood you mastered me? The auguries³ were fair. I, too, should have been a singer, and lo, I strive for science. All my boyhood was singing, what of you; and my father was a singer, too, in his own fine way. Dear to me is your likening of him to Waring.—"What's become of Waring?" He was Waring. I can think of him only as one who went away, "chose land travel or seafaring."

 

Gwynne says I am sometimes almost a poet—Gwynne, you know, Arthur Gwynne, who has come to live with me at The Ridge. "If it were not for your dismal⁴ science," he is sure to add; and to fire him I lay it to the defects of early training. I know he thinks that I never half appreciated you, and that I do not appreciate you now. If you will recollect⁵, you praised his verses once. He cherishes that praise amongst his sweetest treasures. Poor dear good old Gwynne, tender, sensitive, shrinking, with the face of a seraph⁶ and the heart of a maid. Never were two men more incongruously companioned. I love him for himself. He tolerates me, I do secretly believe, because of you. He longs to meet you,—he knew you well through my father,—and we often talk you over. Be sure at every opportunity I tear off your halo and trundle it about. Trust me, you receive

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