[61] He had been "sounded" regarding an appointment as Harvard Exchange Lecturer at the Sorbonne, and had at first been inclined to accept. [62] Busse, _Leib und Seele, Geist und Körper_; Heymans, _Einführung in die Metaphysik_. [63] _Vide Letters of Henry James_, vol. II, p. 43. [64] "Also outside 'addresses,' impossible to refuse. Damn them! Four in this Hotel [in San Francisco] where I was one of four orators who spoke for two hours on 'Reason and Faith,' before a Unitarian Association of Pacific Coasters. Consequence: _gout_ on waking this morning! _Unitarian gout_--was such a thing ever heard of?" (To T. S. Perry, Feb. 6, 1906.) [65] Dr. Snow kindly wrote an account of the afternoon that he spent in James's company in the city and it may here be given in part. "When I met Professor James in San Francisco early in the afternoon of the day of the earthquake, he was full of questions about my personal feelings and reactions and my observations concerning the conduct and evidences of self-control and fear or other emotions of individuals with whom I had been closely thrown, not only in the medical work which I did, but in the experiences I had on the fire-lines in dragging hose and clearing buildings in advance of the dynamiting squads. "I described to him an incident concerning a great crowd of people who desired to make a short cut to the open space of a park at a time when there was danger of all of them not getting across before certain buildings were dynamited. Several of the city's police had stretched a rope across this street and were volubly and vigorously combating the onrush of the crowd, using their clubs rather freely. Some one cut the rope. At that instant, a lieutenant of the regular army with three privates appeared to take up guard duty. The lieutenant placed his guard and passed on. The three soldiers immediately began their beat, dividing the width of the street among themselves. The crowd waited, breathless, to see what the leaders of the charge upon the police would now do. One man started to run across the street and was knocked down cleverly by the sentry, with the butt of his gun. This sentry coolly continued his patrol and the man sat up, apparently thinking himself wounded, then scuttled back into the crowd, drawing from every one a laugh which was evidently with the soldiers. Immediately, the crowd began to melt away and proceed up a side street in the direction laid out for them.