tortuous; yet even here it was only on particularly rough or uneven
portions of the way that the doctor moderated our speed to less than a
four-minute gait.

As we rode along at this exhilarating pace, the buggy whirling around
acute curves among the mighty oaks and maples, now and then dashing down
a forty-five-degree descent of fifty or sixty feet, again thundering
over a dilapidated bridge of resonant planks, the doctor remarked to me
that Peters was certain to die, it being only a question of days, or
perhaps of hours. "Old Peters," he said, "has been without visible means
of support for the past two or three years. The Lord only knows how he
has lived since the period when he became unable to work. Even his small
farm is mortgaged for all it is worth." I expressed to the doctor some
surprise that he should be making twenty-mile drives to see a lonely old
man whose illness he was unable to relieve, and from whom he could
expect no fee. I had grown to take an interest in hearing Castleton
express his opinions. Many of his conceptions of life were so unique;
his mental vision, always intensely acute, was often so oblique; his
station of mental observation so alterable, and so quickly altered; his
sentiments often so earthy, again so exalted--that I believe the man
would have interested me even under circumstances less quiet and
monotonous than were those of my stay, up to this time, in Bellevue. To
my expression of mild wonderment that he should tax his time and
energies to such an extent without pecuniary gain, he replied:

"My dear sir, you are a traveller. You have sailed the seas and crossed
the mighty main; you have dashed over mountains, and sweltered 'mid
tropical suns on sandy desert-wastes. To you our Rockies are
mole-hills--our great lakes mere ponds. You are not a child to cry out
in the darkness. Granted. Yet, sir, let us by a stretch of fancy imagine