G58 HORACE ELISHA SCUDDER. 



them the Atlantic Monthly Magazine from 1890 to 1898, preparing for it 

 also that invaluable index, so important to bibliographers ; he also edited 

 the "American Commonwealth" series, and two detached volumes, 

 "American Poems" (1879) and "American Prose" (1880). He pub- 

 lished also the " Bodley Books " (8 vols. Boston, 1875 to 1887) ; " The 

 Dwellers in Five Sisters' Court" (1876); "Boston Town" (1881); 

 "Life of Noah Webster" (1882) ; "A History of the United States " 

 for schools (1884); "Men and Letters" (1887); "Life of George 

 Washington" (1889); " Literature in School" (1889); "Childhood in 

 Literature and Art" (1894), besides various books of which he was the 

 editor or compiler only. He was also for nearly six years (1877-82) a 

 member of the Cambridge School Committee ; for five years (1884-89) of 

 the State Board of Education ; for nine years (1889-98) of the Harvard 

 University visiting committee in English literature ; and was at the time 

 of his death a trustee of Williams College, Wellesley College, and St. 

 John's Theological School, these making altogether a quarter of a cen- 

 tury of almost uninterrupted and wholly unpaid public service in the 

 cause of education. Since May 28, 1889, he was a member of this 

 Academy, until January 11, 1902, when he died. This is the simple 

 record of a most useful and admirable life, filled more and more, as it went 

 on, with gratuitous public services and disinterested acts for others. 



As a literary workman, his nicety of method and regularity of life 

 went beyond those of any man I have known. Working chiefly at 

 home, he assigned in advance a certain number of liours daily as due 

 to the firm for which he labored ; and he then kept carefully the record 

 of these hours, and if he took out a half hour for his own private work, 

 made it up. He had special work assigned by himself for a certain 

 time before breakfast, an interval which he daily gave largely to the 

 Greek Testament and at some periods to Homer, Thucydides, Herodotus, 

 and Xenophon ; working always with the original at hand and writing out 

 translations or commentaries, always in the same exquisite handwriting 

 and at first contained in small thin note-books, afterwards bound in 

 substantial volumes, with morocco binding and proper lettering. All his 

 writings were thus handsomely treated, and the shelves devoted to his 

 own works, pamphlet or otherwise, were to the eye a very conservatoiy 

 and flower garden of literature ; or like a chamberful of children to whom 

 even a frugal parent may allow himself the luxury of pretty clothes. All 

 his literary arrangements were neat and perfect, and represented that 

 other extreme from that celebrated collection of De Quincey in Dove 

 Cottage at Grasmere, where that author had five thousand books, by 



