But I felt so convinced that he ought to do it that I persisted in my begging, and finally he began to yield. The handsome sum _McClure’s_ was willing to pay had something to do with it, for Mr. Schurz was not a rich man and here was a chance to leave to his family this extra money. Once he had made up his mind to the task, he thoroughly enjoyed it; and no one could have been more anxious to use material to suit the needs of the magazine. Working with him was a joy. He was gay, companionable, full of anecdotes, frank in comment. I remember him best at his summer home at Lake George where it was necessary for me to go two or three times to settle some editorial point. Here you would hear him in the morning as he was getting ready for breakfast giving the Valkyrie cries, singing motive after motive of the Wagnerian operas, in a clear youthful voice. Sometimes he would spring up from the table where he was at work, and seating himself at the piano would improvise dashingly until the mood which had taken him from his desk passed; then back to his labor. The house stood in the upper corner of a park of fifty or sixty acres of woodland—not over-cleared—and open by winding paths down the hillside to the lake. Every turn, every rock had its name usually celebrating some Wagnerian scene, and as you passed Mr. Schurz would roll out the appropriate song. There never was a more lovable or youthful man of seventy than Carl Schurz. The completion of the Life of Lincoln did not end my interest in the man. He had come to mean more to me as a human being than anybody I had studied. I never doubted his motives, and he never bored me. Still, whenever I have the opportunity I pick him up. The greatest regret of my professional life is that I shall not live to write another life of him. There is so much of him I never touched. 10 REDISCOVERING MY COUNTRY