BOSTON, _Mar. 9, 1898_. DEAR WILLIAM,--We have thought and talked a good deal about the subject of your speech in the course of the last week. I prepared with infinite labor a letter intended for the _Transcript_ of last Saturday, but it was not a weighty contribution and I am rather glad it was too late to get in. I think it is generally felt among the best doctors that your position was the liberal one, and that it would be a mistake to try to exact an examination of the mind-healers and Christian Scientists. On the other hand, I am afraid most of the doctors, even including myself, do not have any great feeling of fondness for them, and we are more in the way of seeing the fanatical spirit in which they proceed and the harm that they sometimes do than you are. Of course they do also good things which would remain otherwise not done, and that is the important point, and sincere fanatics are almost always, and in this case I think certainly, of real value. Always affectionately, JAMES J. P. [19] That is, there was here no path to follow, only "blazes" on the trees. [20] The housekeeper at the Putnam-Bowditch "shanty." [21] Photograph of a boy and girl standing on a rock which hangs dizzily over a great precipice above the Yosemite Valley. [22] G. E. Woodberry: _The Heart of Man_; 1899. [23] James's house was number 95, his mother-in-law's number 107. [24] Augusta was the house-maid; Dinah, a bull-terrier. [25] It will be recalled that Davidson had a summer School of Philosophy at his place called Glenmore on East Hill, and that East Hill is at one end of Keene Valley. See also James's essay on Thomas Davidson, "A Knight Errant of the Intellectual Life," in _Memories and Studies_. [26] A gift which provided for building the "Harvard Union." [27] "You have never spent a night under our roof, or eaten a meal in our house!" This fictitious charge had become the recognized theme of frequent elaborations. [28] _The World and the Individual_, vol. I. Mrs. Evans was inclined to contend for Royce's philosophy. [29] The name of an American claret which his correspondent had "discovered" and in which it also pleased James to find merit. [30] The second volume of _The World and the Individual_. (Gifford Lectures at the University of Aberdeen.) [31] _Interpretations of Poetry and Religion._ New York, 1900. [32] _Memoiren einer Idealistin_, by Malwida von Meysenbug, Stuttgart, 1877. [33] _Recollections of My Mother_ [Anne Jean Lyman], by Susan I. Lesley, Boston, 1886. [34] Sister Nivedita. [35] Booker T. Washington's _Up from Slavery_. [36] "Frederick Myers's Services to Psychology." Reprinted in _Memories and Studies_. [37] _The Individual, A Study of Life and Death_. New York, 1900. This letter is reproduced from the _Autobiography_ of N. S. Shaler, where it has already been published. [38] Mrs. O. W. Holmes had used the following translation of an epitaph in the Greek Anthology:--