degree, a greater sense of the loveliness of "luminous understanding, personal verve, light of expression, the feeling of ideas and the thinking of emotions, deathless loyalty which betrays only at the clutch of some deeper loyalty." They all brought him himself.
In the last years given him he was touching life at a multitude of points. By virtue of the talisman he bore in him, he seemed to find his way with ease to the movements which, dissimilar though they seemed to be, nevertheless were each to some extent moved by the principle active in himself. He discovered new educational experiments; new pathfindings in philosophy and literature; new flights in politics and musical art. To the problems of each field he seemed to bring the whole sum of his former experience, his deep intuition and sure sense of fact, sharp comprehension, quick imaginativeness, and pleasure in the sensuous. And through this liberal delivery, the reports of his discoveries, whether they assumed the shape of a description of the schools in Gary or of a review of a novel, of a whimsical account of friends, children, teachers, or a serious discussion of the future of American culture, became, almost always, experiments in themselves, new theories of facts, new keen images of reality. Bourne could speak with equal sureness, humanity, lightness on a dozen different topics; and his talk itself, like his book-reviewing, was a sort of adventure. Through each subject, Bourne seemed to touch the living, fluid principle; even politics became life when he tossed it on his mobile hands. One miniature but nevertheless perfectly authentic salon, at the very least, was started about his person; and persisted, in New York itself, while he was there to talk brilliantly and provoke good talk with his sharp ironical mind. It languished only with his death.
Just as he could enter the gates of a dozen distinct media of expression, so too, he seemed to be able to express himself with perfect ease through several of them. Very few of his friends did not have the delight of coming in on him some morning, and hearing him, his language precise with wisdom and delicate irony, talk off some article, some of his priceless replies to Dewey, some one of his finest bits of logic, even while he was engaged in the seemingly effortless act of composition; and then seeing him step over to his upright piano and begin playing Bach or Ravel or Scriabine. Bourne could, how quietly! charm a dinner table, from his chair where he throned like a little pope, with his brilliant political
