In the morning at six, I shouldered my undiminished pack and went up Marcy, ahead of the party, who arrived half an hour later, and we got in here at eight [P.M.] after 10-1/2 hours of the solidest walking I ever made, and I, I think, more fatigued than I have been after any walk. We plunged down Marcy, and up Bason Mountain, led by C. Goldmark, who had, with Mr. White, blazed a trail the year before;[19] then down again, away down, and up the Gothics, not counting a third down-and-up over an intermediate spur. It was the steepest sort of work, and, as one looked from the summits, seemed sheer impossible, but the girls kept up splendidly, and were all fresher than I. It was true that they had slept like logs all night, whereas I was "on my nerves." I lost my Norfolk jacket at the last third of the course--high time to say good-bye to that possession--and staggered up to the Putnams to find Hatty Shaw[20] taking me for a tramp. Not a soul was there, but everything spotless and ready for the arrival today. I got a bath at Bowditch's bath-house, slept in my old room, and slept soundly and well, and save for the unwashable staining of my hands and a certain stiffness in my thighs, am entirely rested and well. But I don't believe in keeping it up too long, and at the Willey House will lead a comparatively sedentary life, and cultivate sleep, if I can.... W. J. The intense experience which James thus described had consequences that were not foreseen at the time. He had gone to the Adirondacks at the close of the college term in a much fatigued condition. He had been sleeping badly for some weeks, and when he started up Mount Marcy he had neuralgia in one foot; but he had characteristically determined to ignore and "bully" this ailment. Under such conditions the prolonged physical exertion of the two days' climb, aggravated by the fact that he carried a pack all the second day, was too much for a man of his years and sedentary occupations. As the summer wore on, pain or discomfort in the region of his heart became constant. He tried to persuade himself that it signified nothing and would pass away, and concealed it from his wife until mid-winter. To Howison--who was himself a confessed heart case--he wrote, "My heart has been kicking about terribly of late, stopping, and hurrying and aching and so forth, but I do not propose to give up to it too much." The fact was that the strain of the two days' climb had caused a valvular lesion that was irreparable, although not great enough seriously to curtail his activities if he had given heed to his general condition and avoided straining himself again. In August James went to California to give the lectures which have already been mentioned in a letter to Pillon. Again, these lectures were in substance the "Talks to Teachers." The next letter, written just before he left Cambridge, answers a request to him to address the Philosophical Club at the University of California. _To G. H. Howison._