THE LAST YEARS 383 
T 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, 1904. — 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 difficult 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 4. — 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. 
