Francis Parkman 251 



" His health improved under the process, and 

 the remainder of the volume in other words, 

 nearly the whole of it was composed in Boston, 

 while pacing in the twilight of a large garret, the 

 only exercise which the sensitive condition of his 

 sight permitted him in an unclouded day while the 

 sun was above the horizon. It was afterwards 

 written down from dictation by relatives under the 

 same roof, to whom he was also indebted for the 

 preparatory readings. His progress was much less 

 tedious than at the outset, and the history was 

 complete in about two years and a half." 



The book composed under such formidable dif- 

 ficulties was published in 1851. It did not at 

 once meet with the reception which it deserved. 

 The reading public did not expect to find enter- 

 tainment in American history. In the New Eng- 

 land of those days the general reader had heard a 

 good deal about the Pilgrim Fathers and Salem 

 Witchcraft, and remembered hazily the stories of 

 Hannah Dustin and of Putnam and the wolf, but 

 could not be counted on for much else before the 

 Revolution. I remember once hearing it said that 

 the story of the " Old French War " was some- 

 thing of no more interest or value for Americans 

 of to-day than the cuneiform records of an insur- 

 rection in ancient Nineveh ; and so slow are peo- 



