Overdoing the Past 123 



should like to have George Washington's life 

 retold in each of the magazines in turn, and 

 then retold again when the last of them had 

 printed it. The value of keeping Napoleon 

 always in evidence were perhaps less obvious. 

 Still, in those aspe&s of his character in 

 which he was not an example, he was a tre- 

 mendous warning. The day has not yet 

 come when we can afford to let Washington 

 sleep, or fail to profit by a study of Napo- 

 leon's rise to dictatorship." And, again, he 

 says, "It does not appear whether or no 

 Abraham Lincoln is one of your betes noires. 

 There has been rather more about him in the 

 magazines than about Washington or Bona- 

 parte. To be sure, he has been dead only a 

 third of a century ; but he is not one of those 

 ' who are striving at this time to make our 

 lives better worth the living.' Doubtless, 

 though, his example is more potent for good 

 than that of any living man. I should like 

 to know what great and good man of to-day 

 the magazines have neglefted, after all ?" 



I do not see that I am squelched by 

 Brother Quill. My claim is that biography 

 should be written for the benefit of the 

 young just as much if not more than for the 



