small and discriminating; nose upturned, nostrils expanded and receptive; mouth saucy in the literal sense. His voice, moreover, was a cook’s, — thick in articulation, dulcet in tone. He spoke as if he deemed that a throat was created for better uses than laboriously manufacturing words, — as if the object of a mouth were to receive tribute, not to give commands, — as if that pink stalactite, his palate, were more used by delicacies entering, than by rough words or sorry sighs going out of the inner caverns.
When we find the right man in the right place, our minds are at ease. The future becomes satisfactory as the past. Anticipation is glad certainty, not anxious doubt. Trusting our gastronomic welfare fully to this great artist, we tried for fish below the dam. Only petty fishlings, weighing ounces, took the bit between their teeth. We therefore doffed the fisherman and donned the artist and poet, and chased our own fancies down the dark whirlpooling river, along its dell of evergreens, now lurid with the last glows of twilight. Iglesias and I continued dreamily gazing down the thoro’fare toward Mollychunkamug only a certain length of time. Man keeps up to his highest elations hardly longer than a danseuse can poise in a pose. To be conscious of the highest beauty demands an involuntary intentness of observation so fanatically eager that presently we are prostrated and need stimulants. And just as we sensitively felt this exhaustion and this need, we heard
