And let me say right here that toward Harvard’s teachers I bear no malice. In showing Professor Hill’s books to be puerile and profitless, and in depositing the Heir-Apparent in the ragbag of oblivion, I have no sinister motive. And if from this time forward their names are a byword and a hissing, it is only because the Institution which they serve has stood in the way of Eternal Truth. These professors of rhetoric prospecting on the mountain side, thinking they had found the Final Word, builded tabernacles and rested—all forgetful of the avalanche. “Clearness” is never found in literature of the first class. Clearness, according to the Professor, means a simplicity that makes the meaning plain to all others. But this is only pabulum for the sophomore intellect; and outside of Bryant & Stratton’s it has no legitimate place. The great writer is only clear to himself or those as great as he. The masterpieces of Art are all cloud-capped. Few men indeed ever reach the summit: we watch them as they ascend and we lose them in the mists as they climb: sometimes they never come back to us, and even if they do, having been on the Mount of Transfiguration, they are no longer ours. In all great literature there is this large, airy impersonal independence. The Mountain does not go to you: you may famish out there on the arid plain and your bones whiten amid the alkali in the glistening sun, but the majestic Mountain looks on imperturbable. The valleys are there, with the rich verdure, and the running brooks where the trout frolic, and the cool springs where wild game gathers, but what cares the Mountain for you! Ecclesiastes offers no premiums to readers, Shakespeare makes no appeal to club raisers, Emerson puts forth no hot endeavor for a million subscribers: all these can do without you. Rich lodes run through this Mountain, and we continually delve and toil for treasure. And in spite of the pain and isolation and the privation that is incident, and the dangerous crevices that lie in wait, we secure a reward for our labor. Still we do not find the fabled “pockets” that we seek—it is always something else. From Columbus searching for a Northwest Passage to the rustic swain who follows with such fidelity the wake of a petticoat, all are the sport of Fate. We achieve, but die in ignorance of the extent to which we have benefitted the Race. And like the man who rode the hobby all his life, and whose friends discovered after he was dead that it was a real horse and had carried the man many long miles, so are we carried on steeds that are guided by an Unseen Hand.