230 BIRDS AND POETS 
like a pear? If you wonld have greatness, know 
that you must conquer it through ages, centuries, — 
must pay for it with a proportionate price. For 
you, too, as for all lands, the struggle, the traitor, 
the wily person in office, scrofulous wealth, the sur- 
feit of prosperity, the demonism of greed, the hell 
of passion, the decay of faith, the long postpone- 
ment, the fossil-like lethargy, the ceaseless need of 
revolutions, prophets, thunder-storms, deaths, births, 
new projections, and invigorations of ideas and men.” 
The ‘Memoranda during the War” is mainly a 
record of personal experiences, nursing the sick and 
wounded soldiers in the hospitals: most of it is in 
a low key, simple, unwrought, like a diary kept for 
one’s self; but it reveals the large, tender, sympa- 
thetic soul of the poet, and puts in practical form 
that unprecedented and fervid comradeship which is 
his leading element, even more than his elaborate 
works. It is printed almost verbatim, just as the 
notes were jotted down at the time and on the spot. 
It is impossible to read it without the feeling of 
tears, while there is elsewhere no such portrayal of 
the common soldier, and such appreciation of him as 
is contained in its pages. It is heart’s blood, every 
word of it, and along with “ Drum-taps” is the only 
literature of the war thus far entirely characteristic 
and worthy of serious mention. ‘There are in par- 
ticular two passages in the “‘ Memoranda” that have 
amazing dramatic power, vividness, and rapid action, 
like some quick painter covering a large canvas. I 
refer to the account of the assassination of President 
