Following a Trusted Guide

Judge Troward, although modest and retiring in his habits of speech and slow to express a personal opinion, was always willing to discuss any current subject, but extremely reticent and diffident about his own writings. Never, to my knowledge, did he mention them unless approached on the subject. As a teacher, he was positive, direct, and always impersonal. When our lesson was given indoors, he always sat in a large morris chair, and, seeming not to be aware of my presence, he would think aloud. To follow his thought was like following a trusted guide through the most difficult places, the darkest and least explored regions of thought. As I followed, the personality of the man became obscure, and I was only conscious of the clear, commanding voice, and the light of the inward torch which he bore. It was beyond doubt quite natural that he who made so clear the true meaning of individuality should in his teaching betray little of the personal or emotional element. After I had been carefully guided to the most comforting conclusions, in the same quiet, unassuming manner as in the beginning of our mental journey, my guide would gently remind me that he had given me a few suggestions which I might follow if I felt inclined, but which were offered only in the friendly spirit of a fellow-traveler. He always tried to impress upon me that every effort to accomplish mental control (which, in turn, meant control of circumstances) should be undertaken with absolute confidence of success. The length of a lesson depended upon my ability to absorb what he was telling me. If he were convinced if fifteen or thirty minutes that I understood quite naturally the reason why, for example, "If a thing is true." There is a way in which it is true," that lesson was concluded. If it took me an hour or more to get into the spirit of his thought, the lesson was prolonged. At the end of a lesson he would quietly remark, "Never forget that 'seeking has 'finding' as its correlative: 'knocking,' 'opening.'" With this reassuring statement, he would light his lantern and step into the denseness of the night to walk three miles to his home.