But it is a clumsy method, well nigh intolerable, which leads one to visit certain places and consult certain authorities for data on one name, and then return over pretty much the same ground for the second, the third, and all other names on a long list. We rejected the thought of such a system, determining that as each authority came into our hands we would extract whatever it contained on any of our names. This settled, another question presented itself. Should we carry a separate notebook for every name investigated? Our list of names was so formidable that such an expedient threatened to transform the genealogist into a genealogical packhorse. Hence we preferred to carry a book or two at a time, to which we committed all our discoveries. Previous historical training had taught us to note the authority with each item, and we made rapid progress with the work. When one notebook was full, another took its place. What could be more simple and expeditious? But the day came when we sat down to compile. Alas! our sins had found us out! A stack of notebooks lay before us, and through them all were scattered our data for each name, without system or chronological order. Oh, the despair of going through that pile of books, turning down pages and numbering items according to dates, in a desperate attempt to arrange the material for each name so as to compile the facts in a decent order! In spite of all our care, the wretched books concealed desirable items until our manuscript had passed the proper place of insertion, sardonically calling our attention to the omissions when we were busy with another subject. How we grew to hate those notebooks, and how they tormented us with a plague of re-writing! We had a premonition that they would conceal some things to the very last; and, sure enough, having tortured us during the days of writing, humiliated us in the proof-sheets, and demanded a display of errata as the book went to press, they waited until it was nicely printed, bound and published before making their final disclosures! To obviate all this trouble, we now have the Grafton Genealogical Notebook, American Form. As the last two words indicate, this notebook embodies the arrangement of the "clan" genealogy used by the most eminent American genealogists and adopted by such organizations as the New England Historic-Genealogical Society and the New York Genealogical and Biographical Society.