. Literary friends and acquaintance : a personal retrospect of American authorship. of military history, and winning recognitionfor almost unique insight and thoroughness in that direc-tion, though I believe that when he came to embody theresults in those extraordinary volumes recording thebattles of our civil war, he retired from the law insome measure. He knew these battles more accuratelythan the generals who fought them, and he was of a likeproficiency in the European wars from the time ofN*apoleon down to our own time. I have heard a story,which I cannot vouch for, that when foreknowledge
. Literary friends and acquaintance : a personal retrospect of American authorship. of military history, and winning recognitionfor almost unique insight and thoroughness in that direc-tion, though I believe that when he came to embody theresults in those extraordinary volumes recording thebattles of our civil war, he retired from the law insome measure. He knew these battles more accuratelythan the generals who fought them, and he was of a likeproficiency in the European wars from the time ofN*apoleon down to our own time. I have heard a story,which I cannot vouch for, that when foreknowledge ofhis affliction, at the outbreak of our civil war, forbadehim to be a soldier, he became a student of soldiership,and wreaked in that sort the passion of his most gallantspirit. But whether this was true or not, it is certainthat he pursued the study with a devotion which neverblinded him to the atrocity of war. Some wars he couldexcuse and even justify, but for any war that seemedwanton or aggressive, he had only abhorrence. The last summer of a score that I had known him,144. SAMUEL BOWLES LITERARY BOSTON AS I KNEW IT we sat on the veranda of his cottage at York Harbor,and looked out over the moonlit sea, and he talked ofthe high and true things, with the inextinguishable zestfor the inquiry which I always found in him, thoughhe was then feeling the approaches of the malady whichwas so soon to end all groping in these shadows forhim. He must have faced the fact with the samecourage and the same trust with which he faced all the first I found him a deeply religious man, noton]}^ in the ecclesiastical sense, but in the more mysticalmeanings of the word, and he kept his faith as he kepthis youth to the last. Every one who knew him, knowshow young he was in heart, and how he liked to havethose that were young in years about him. He wishedto have his house in Boston, as well as his cottage atY^ork, full of young men and young girls, whose joy of>life he made his o^
Size: 1347px × 1855px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectamericanliterature
