Standing on the threshold of my eightieth year, stumbling badly, moreover, through the mutiny, well justified, of a pair of worn-out eyes, I, a veteran maker of books, must look forward to the closing of an over-long series. I retain in my memory certain films, which record impressions of long ago. Can I not possibly develop and present these film records for a moving picture of the men and events of an eventful period? We old story-tellers do our talking under a heavy handicap. Homer, long ago,

"Tippecanoe and Tyler too." Millard Fillmore. Abraham Lincoln at Church. Stephen A. Douglas. Daniel Webster. William H. Seward. Edward Everett. Robert C. Winthrop. Charles Sumner. John A. Andrew....

U.S. Grant. Philip H. Sheridan. George G. Meade. W.T. Sherman. Jacob D. Cox. N.P. Banks. B.F. Butler. John Pope. Henry W. Slocum. O.O. Howard. Rufus Saxton. James H. Wilson. T.W. Sherman. Horatio G. Wright. Isaac I. Stevens. Harvard Soldiers. W.F. Bartlett. Charles R. Lowell. Francis C. Barlow....

Horace Mann. "The New Wrinkle at Sweetbrier." Dramatics in the Schools of Germany, of France, of England, at Antioch College....

Prussia in 1870. Militarism in the Schools, in the Universities, in the Home, in the Sepulchre. The Hohenzollern Lineage....

Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse. The Emperor Frederick. Wilhelm II. Francis Joseph of Austria. King Ludwig of Bavaria. Munich in War-time. A Deserted Switzerland. France in Arms. Paris on the Verge of the Siege....

George Bancroft. Justin Winsor. John Fiske....

Sir Richard Garnett. S.R. Gardiner. E.A. Freeman. Goldwin Smith. James Bryce. The House of Commons. Lord Randolph Churchill and W.E. Gladstone as Makers of History. Von Treitschke. Ernst Curtius. Leopold von Ranke. Theodor Mommsen. Lepsius. Hermann Grimm....

Henry W. Longfellow. Oliver Wendell Holmes. James Russell Lowell. The Town of Concord. Henry D. Thoreau. Louisa M. Alcott. Nathaniel Hawthorne. Ralph Waldo Emerson. Phillips Brooks....

German Scientists: Kirchoff, the Physicist. Bunsen, the Chemist. Helmholtz. American Scientists: Simon Newcomb, Asa Gray, Louis Agassiz, Alexander Agassiz....

William Grey, Ninth Earl of Stamford. The Franciscan of Salzburg. The Berlin Dancer. Visits to Old Battle-fields. Eupeptic Musings. The Last Leaf...

I came to consciousness in the then small town of Buffalo in western New York, whither, in Andrew Jackson's day, our household gods and goods were conveyed from Massachusetts for the most part by the Erie Canal, the dizzy rate of four miles an hour not taking away my baby breath. Speaking of men and affairs of state, as I shall do in this opening paper, I felt my earliest political thrill in 1840. I have a distinct vision, the small boy's point of view being not much above the sidewalk, of the s

In speaking of soldiers I shall do better to pay slight attention to the men of chief importance; for them the trumpets have sounded sufficiently and I came into personal contact with only one or two. Grant, I saw once, after he was Lieutenant-General, on the platform of a railroad station submitting stoically to the compliments of a lively crowd of women. Once again I saw him, in academic surroundings, sturdy and impassive, an incongruous element among the caps and gowns; but it was among such

The cataclysm of the Civil War, in which as the preceding pages show I had been involved, had shaken me in my old moorings. I found myself not content in a quiet parish in the Connecticut Valley, and as I fared forth was fortunate enough to meet a leader in a remarkable personage. Horace Mann was indeed dead, but remained, as he still remains, a power. His brilliant gifts and self-consecration made him, first, a great educational path-breaker. From that he passed into politics, exhibiting in Con

In January of 1870, having decided to teach rather than preach, I embarked for Germany to enjoy a year of foreign study. Like Western professors in general (to borrow the witticism of President Eliot) I occupied not so much a chair as a sofa, and felt that I needed enlargement for the performance of my functions. I think I saw a certain caricature first in Munich at the end of July, then in two or three Swiss cities, then in Paris at the end of August, then in Brussels and London; for it was pop

We rememberers lie under certain suspicion. "Uncle Mose," said an inquirer, his intonation betraying scepticism, "they say you remember General Washington." "Yaas, Boss," replied Uncle Mose, "I used to 'member Gen'l Washington, but sence I jined de church I done forgot." Not having joined Uncle Mose's church, my memory has not experienced the ecclesiastical discouragement that befell him. I humbly trust, however, it needs no chastening, and aver that I do not go for my facts to my imagination. I

As a Harvard undergraduate I roomed for a time in Hollis 8, a room occupied in turn by William H. Prescott and James Schouler, and perhaps I may attribute to some contagion caught as a transmittendum in that apartment, an itch for writing history which has brought some trouble to me and to the rather limited circle of readers whom I have reached. I remember debating, as a boy, whether the more desirable fame fell to the hero in a conflict or to the scribe who told the story. Whose place would on

When I went to England in 1886 to collect materials for a life of Young Sir Henry Vane, John Fiske gave me a letter to Dr. Richard Garnett, then Superintendent of the Reading Room in the British Museum. He afterwards became Sir Richard Garnett and was promoted to be Keeper of Printed Books, perhaps the highest position among the librarians of the world, a post to which he did honour. Dr. Garnett, slender and alert, the heaped-up litter of volumes and manuscripts in his study telling at a glance

When, in 1851, I arrived as a freshman in Cambridge, I encountered on my first visit to the post-office a figure standing on the steps, which at once drew my attention. It was that of a man in his best years, handsome, genial of countenance, and well-groomed. A silk hat surmounted his well-barbered head and visage, a dark frock-coat was buttoned about his form, his shoes were carefully polished and he twirled a little cane. To my surprise he bowed to me courteously as I glanced up. I was very hu

In England, in the fall of 1870, I missed an opportunity to see the great scientific men of the time. Faraday was still active, and in the full ripeness of his fame. Huxley, Tyndall, Darwin, Sir Joseph Hooker, Joule, Lyell, Murchison were in the midst of their best work, and probably all or most of them were present at the meeting of the British Association, which took place that year somewhere in the west of England. Miss Frances Power Cobbe, with whom I had for some time maintained a correspon

In 1887, in pleasant June weather I left St. Louis with my family on the capacious river-packet Saint Paul , for a trip up-stream to the city for which the boat was named. The flood was at the full as we ploughed on, stopping at landings on either side, the reaches between presenting long perspectives of summer beauty. We paused in due course at a little Iowa town, and among the passengers who took the boat here were two men who excited our attention at the landing. One was a tall handsome fello