FRANCIS PARKMAN. 441 



one who knew liim knows that he constantly realized to underlie 

 the facts and the people he has made so vividly real. A deliberate 

 practice of his, too, gives color to the superficial criticism. He 

 was very sparing of generalization, of philosophic comment. For 

 this he had good reason. To philosophize with certainty of convic- 

 tion means to think long and hard ; to philosophize flippantly means 

 not to realize the responsibility which lies on whoever dares to leave 

 written records behind him. This responsibility Mr. Parkman fully 

 realized ; from the beginning of his life to the end his infirmities 

 forbade him sustained intensity of thought. To them, I believe, and 

 only to them, we may attribute our misfortune in that this gentlest 

 and ripest of our historical writers has not left us books that should 

 instantly show him beyond cpuestion the gravest of our historical 

 thinkers. 



III. 



Mr. Parkman's personality was so marked that any memory of it is 

 worth recording. I shall ask no further justification for telling here 

 what I remember of him. 



Before I ever saw him, or ever read a line of his writing, I had 

 heard, like any man of my age, a good deal about him. In the first 

 place, he was one of the New England historians ; and somehow these 

 writers, I think, were generally held by the local public opinion of 

 their time rather more profoundly respectable than auything else on 

 earth. In the second place, though the actual details of his illness 

 were not generally known until the publication of his autobiography, 

 the fact of his illness was of course apparent. I have no earlier 

 memory than of tales about him, very properly presented to my child- 

 ish mind in the light of a good old-fashioned example. In spite of 

 his illness, he had written his books, and was going to write more. 

 In spite of his lameness, he was sometimes to be seen, walking with 

 two canes, but still with a brisk step, resting at intervals for a fresh 

 start. Mentally and physically, then, he was indomitable. The fruit 

 of these anecdotes in my mind was that inarticulate sentiment of awful 

 respect so familiar to the traditional youth of New England. 



When I first saw him, I was still an undergraduate in Harvard 

 College. The circumstances of this first sight vanished from my 

 memory long ago. In this very fact there is something characteristic 

 of the man ; locally notable as he was, and notable too in personal 

 appearance, he was very unobtrusive in address, and in general com- 

 pany he was little given to talk. All I can now recall of the begin- 



