THE LAST YEARS 383 



I am glad that this celebration of the Germanic Mu- 

 seum was so dignified and worthy of an occasion which 

 really was one of great significance for Harvard with 

 a somewhat wider importance also. Ida told me that 

 among the speakers William James outdid himself. 

 The closing address was his, and after the somewhat 

 long speeches of the earlier afternoon he dismissed 

 the audience in the best of humors by his wit and 

 lighter touch. His wit has always a literary refine- 

 ment and a certain elegance in the turn of phrase, 

 while it is also perfectly spontaneous and natural. 



January 3, 190 If. — A cold and stormy day which 

 I devoted to William Story's Life. It is an extremely 

 interesting book, not only for the given subject, but 

 for the entourage, the stage setting. The scheme of 

 the book is ingenious and original — the whole is 

 presented as part of a vanished past, out of which 

 the "Dramatis Personae" loom up, evoked as it were 

 from the mists and haze of time, — so many "ghosts" 

 as the author calls them; and so they seem indeed, 

 outlined against the vivid foreground of Italian life 

 and color and movement. Henry James's intricacies 

 of style render it somewhat diflScult of interpreta- 

 tion, but happily the people of whom he treats are 

 simpler than he is, and much of the material consists 

 of the very frank familiar correspondence. 



January J^, — Was reading today Miss Crawford's 

 account of John Eliot and his Indians. It is pictur- 

 esque and effective, and she feels that had his plan 

 been carried out the Indians would have been made an 

 integral and serviceable part of the American nation. 



