Parkman loved to face the hard facts of life and was apt to admire others in the degree in which they showed a like spirit. He had a sovereign contempt for everything not manly and robust. He contradicted with amusing emphasis the statement in some biographical notice that he was ‘feeble.’ By his philosophy the militant attitude toward life was the true one. He believed in war as a moral force; it made for character both in the man and in the nation. ‘The severest disappointment of his life was his inability to enter the army during our civil war.’ He was wholly free from certain narrow traits which are too apt to be engendered in a life devoted to books and authorship. Manly, open-hearted, unspoiled, he neither craved honors nor despised them. It has been remarked that while he was gratified by the recognition accorded his work in high places, he was equally pleased with a letter from ‘a live boy’ who wrote to tell him how much he had enjoyed reading about Pontiac and La Salle. He himself kept to the last a certain boyish frankness of mind and heart. The year before he died he wrote to the secretary of the class of ’44: ‘Please give my kind regrets and remembrances to the fellows.’ There have been not a few attractive personalities in the history of American letters. Parkman was one of the most attractive among them. III THE WRITER The style is clear and luminous. Short sentences abound, giving the effect of rapidity. The mind of the reader never halts because of an obscure term or some intricacy of structure. Neither is the page spotted with long words ending in _tion_, and which coming in groups, as they do in Bancroft, are like grit in the teeth. Parkman did not attain the exquisite grace and composure which characterize Irving’s prose, but he came nearer to it than did Prescott. The historian of Ferdinand and Isabella had a self-conscious style. Agreeable as it is, it reveals a man always on guard as he writes. In his most eloquent passages Prescott is formal, precise, even stiff. Parkman’s style is wholly engaging. There is a captivating manner about it, the result of his immense enthusiasm for his theme. Infinitely laborious in the preparation, sceptical in use of authorities, temperate in judgment, when, however, it comes to telling the story, he allows his genius for narration a free rein, and the style, though losing none of its dignity, is eager and almost impetuous. The historian speaks as an eye-witness of all he describes. This explains Parkman’s popularity in large degree. Fascinating as the subject is, the manner adds a hundred fold. He who reads Bancroft gets a deal of information, for which he pays a round price. He who reads Parkman gets facts, eloquence, philosophy, besides no end of adventure, and for all this he pays literally nothing. IV EARLY WORK _OREGON TRAIL_, _CONSPIRACY OF PONTIAC_, _VASSALL MORTON_