A Brief Passage

Biographical description, appreciation, and feeling, sometimes are best represented by the narration of real episodes. It is not my position to say that I knew Dr. Jelliffe many, many years. In the twenties he accepted two of my neurological articles for publication; to my mind great worlds then separated us. In the early thirties it was my good fortune to come to know him, for from then he extended me unusual warmth and consideration. At the time, I was psychiatrist at the Great Meadow Prison which was a few, although a very mountainous and precipitous few, miles from his summer home at Huletts Landing. One summer day a pleasant surprise greeted me in the form of a letter from him, saying he liked my work and would I come over and have a chat with him. This was typical of the man. Whenever and wherever he saw the slightest sign of a new wrinkle or a new mountain in the terrain of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, or neurology, he wanted to know more. Naturally I leaped at the idea, phoned him at his direction and in a couple of days drove down the unusually long and steep grade to the edge of Lake George, wormed my way along the tortuous dirt road and then edged through the narrow gate and over the minute bridge on to his property. There he was, ever busy, ready to greet me in his genial way and to put me at my ease even before I was on the ground. He conducted me about, telling the history of a little building here or a bit of terrain there, all with the utmost simplicity as if offering a chair, and with not the slightest presumption or vanity usually displayed by others in such tours.

Naturally, his eyes sparkled most keenly as he showed me into the library where he worked most of the time. He was an omniverous reader, knew where every book was and also seemed to know where every line in every book was, without wracking his brain. After a while we sat on a porch that hung high over the lake's edge and talked a long while, the first of many such talks. I was very glad I