He wore a hat of the kind that was called in
those days a "wide-awake," and he leaned heavily on a stick which he
carried in his right hand. I stood reverently aside to let him pass--
the man who had first taught me to see, to feel, to think. Yes, it was
Thomas Carlyle; and as he went by, looking neither to the right nor to
the left, my heart stood still within me. What struck me most in that
thought-furrowed face was the eyes. I had never, I have never since,
seen a pair of eyes which,' etc., etc. This is well enough, and I
don't say that the writer has exaggerated the force of the impression
he received. I say merely that the impression would have been stronger
still if he had seen Carlyle in a room. The open air is not really a
good setting for a hero. It is too diffuse. It is too impersonal. Four
walls, a ceiling, and a floor--these things are needed to concentrate
for the worshipper the vision vouchsafed. Even if the room be a public
one--a waiting-room, say, at Clapham Junction--it is very helpful. Far
more so if it be a room in a private house, where, besides the vision
itself, is thrust on the worshipper the dizzy sense of a personal
relationship.
Dip with me, for an example, into some other autobiography... Here:
`Shortly after I came to London'--it is odd that autobiographists
never are born or bred there--`one of the houses I found open to me
was that of Mrs.
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