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piecemeal; and sometimes only by moments; when the terrible head aches
which tormented him; and the disorder of the heart which threatened his
life; allowed him a brief respite for the task which was dear to him。
He must have been more than a quarter of a century in completing it; and
in this time; as he once told me; it had given him a day…laborer's wages;
but of course money was the least return he wished from it。 I read the
regularly successive volumes of 'The Jesuits in North America; The Old
Regime in Canada'; the 'Wolfe and Montcalm'; and the others that went to
make up the whole history with a sufficiently noisy enthusiasm; and our
acquaintance began by his expressing his gratification with the praises
of them that I had put in print。 We entered into relations as
contributor and editor; and I know that he was pleased with my eagerness
to get as many detachable chapters from the book in hand as he could give
me for the magazine; but he was of too fine a politeness to make this the
occasion of his first coming to see me。 He had walked out to Cambridge;
where I then lived; in pursuance of a regimen which; I believe; finally
built up his health; that it was unsparing; I can testify from my own
share in one of his constitutionals in Boston; many years later。
His experience in laying the groundwork for his history; and his
researches in making it thorough; were such as to have liberated him to
the knowledge of other manners and ideals; but he remained strictly a
Bostonian; and as immutably of the Boston social and literary faith as
any I knew in that capital of accomplished facts。 He had lived like an
Indian among the wild Western tribes; he consorted with the Canadian
archaeologists in their mousings among the colonial archives of their
fallen state; every year he went to Quebec or Paris to study the history
of New France in the original documents; European society was open to him
everywhere; but he had those limitations which I nearly always found in
the Boston men; I remember his talking to me of 'The Rise of Silas
Lapham'; in a somewhat troubled and uncertain strain; and interpreting
his rise as the achievement of social recognition; without much or at all
liking it or me for it。 I did not think it my part to point out that I
had supposed the rise to be a moral one; and later I fell under his
condemnation for certain high crimes and misdemeanors I had been guilty
of against a well…known ideal in fiction。 These in fact constituted
lese…majesty of romanticism; which seemed to be disproportionately dear
to a man who was in his own way trying to tell the truth of human nature
as I was in mine。 His displeasures passed; however; and my last meeting
with our greatest historian; as I think him; was of unalloyed
friendliness。 He came to me during my final year in Boston for nothing
apparently but to tell me of his liking for a book of mine describing
boy…life in Southern Ohio a half…century ago。 He wished to talk about
many points of this; which he found the same as his own boylife in the
neighborhood of Boston; and we could agree that the life of the Anglo…
Saxon boy was pretty much the same everywhere。 He had helped himself
into my apartment with a crutch; but I do not remember how he had fallen
lame。 It was the end of his long walks; I believe; and not long
afterwards I had the grief to read of his death。 I noticed that perhaps
through his enforced quiet; he had put on weight; his fine face was full;
whereas when I first knew him he was almost delicately thin of figure and
feature。 He was always of a distinguished presence; and his face had a
great distinction。
It had not the appealing charm I found in the face of James Parton;
another historian I knew earlier in my Boston days。 I cannot say how
much his books; once so worthily popular; are now known but I have an
abiding sense of their excellence。 I have not read the 'Life of
Voltaire'; which was the last; but all the rest; from the first; I have
read; and if there are better American biographies than those of Franklin
or of Jefferson; I could not say where to find them。 The Greeley and the
Burr were younger books; and so was the Jackson; and they were not nearly
so good; but to all the author had imparted the valuable humanity in
which he abounded。 He was never of the fine world of literature; the
world that sniffs and sneers; and abashes the simpler…hearted reader。
But he was a true artist; and English born as he was; he divined American
character as few Americans have done。 He was a man of eminent courage;
and in the days when to be an agnostic was to be almost an outcast; he
had the heart to say of the Mysteries; that he did not know。 He outlived
the condemnation that this brought; and I think that no man ever came
near him without in some measure loving him。 To me he was of a most
winning personality; which his strong; gentle face expressed; and a cast
in the eye which he could not bring to bear directly upon his vis…a…vis;
endeared。 I never met him without wishing more of his company; for he
seldom failed to say something to whatever was most humane and most
modern in me。 Our last meeting was at Newburyport; whither he had long
before removed from New York; and where in the serene atmosphere of the
ancient Puritan town he found leisure and inspiration for his work。
He was not then engaged upon any considerable task; and he had aged and
broken somewhat。 But the old geniality; the old warmth glowed in him;
and made a summer amidst the storm of snow that blinded the wintry air
without。 A new light had then lately come into my life; by which I saw
all things that did not somehow tell for human brotherhood dwarfish and
ugly; and he listened; as I imagined; to what I had to say with the
tolerant sympathy of a man who has been a long time thinking those
things; and views with a certain amusement the zeal of the fresh
discoverer。
There was yet another historian in Boston; whose acquaintance I made
later than either Parkman's or Parton's; and whose very recent death
leaves me with the grief of a friend。 No ones indeed; could meet John
Codman Ropes without wishing to be his friend; or without finding a
friend in him。 He had his likes and his dislikes; but he could have had
no enmities except for evil and meanness。 I never knew a man of higher
soul; of sweeter nature; and his whole life was a monument of character。
It cannot wound him now to speak of the cruel deformity which came upon
him in his boyhood; and haunted all his after days with suffering。 His
gentle face showed the pain which is always the part of the hunchback;
but nothing else in him confessed a sense of his affliction; and the
resolute activity of his mind denied it in every way。 He was; as is well
known; a very able lawyer; in full practice; while he was making his
studies of military history; and winning recognition for almost unique
insight and thoroughness in that direction; though I believe that when he
came to embody the results in those extraordinary volumes recording the
battles of our civil war; he retired from the law in some measure。 He
knew these battles more accurately than the generals who fought them; and
he was of a like proficiency in the European wars from the time of
Napoleon down to our own time。 I have heard a story; which I cannot
vouch for; that when foreknowledge of his afliiction; at the outbreak of
our civil war; forbade him to be a soldier; he became a student of
soldiership; and wreaked in that sort the passion of his most gallant
spirit。 But whether this was true or not; it is certain that he pursued
the study with a devotion which never blinded him to the atrocity of war。
Some wars he could excuse and even justify; but for any war that seemed
wanton or aggressive; he had only abhorrence。
The last summer of a score that I had known him; we sat on the veranda of
his cottage at York Harbor; and looked out over the moonlit sea; and he
talked of the high and true things; with the inextinguishable zest for
the inquiry which I always found in him; though he was then feeling the
approaches of the malady which was so soon to end all groping in these