Ready to do, when the time came; but also--what required a greater soul--ready to wait in cheerful content till the fitting time should come. Think of these volumes lying in his desk at home, and he, their author, going about his daily tasks and pleasures, as hearty and as unrepining as though no whisper of ambition had ever come to his soul,--as though he had no slightest desire for the pleasant fame which a successful book gives to a young man. Think of it, O race of scribblers, to whom a month in the printer's hands seems a monstrous delay, and who bore publishers with half-finished manuscripts, as impatient hens begin, untimely, to cackle before the egg is laid. That a young man, not thirty-three when he died, should have written these volumes, so full of life, so full of strange adventure, of wide reading, telling of such large and thorough knowledge of books and men and Nature, is a remarkable fact in itself. That he should have let the manuscripts lie in his desk has probably surprised the world more. But, much as he wrote, Winthrop, perhaps, always felt that his true life was not that of the author, but of the actor. He has often told me that it was a pleasure to write,--probably such a pleasure as it is to an old tar to spin his yarns. His mind was active, stored with the accumulated facts of a varied experience. How keen an observer of Nature he was, those who have read "John Brent" or the "Canoe and Saddle" need not be told; how appreciative an observer of every-day life, was shown in that brilliant story which appeared in these pages some eighteen months ago, under the title of "Love and Skates." Our American life lost by his death one who, had he lived, would have represented it, reported it to the world, soul and body together; for he comprehended its spirit, as well as saw its outer husk; he was in sympathy with all its manifestations. That quick, intelligent eye saw everything; that kindly, sympathetic spirit comprehended always the soul of things; and no life, however common, rugged, or coarse, was to him empty. If he added always something of his own nobility of heart, if he did not pry out with prurient eyes the meannesses of life around him, the picture he drew was none the less true,--was, indeed, it seems to me, all the more true. Therefore I say that his early death was a loss to American literature, or, to speak more accurately, to that too small part of our literature which concerns itself with American life. To him the hard-featured Yankee had something besides hard features and ungainly manners; he saw the better part as well as the grosser of the creature, and knew that "Poor lone Hannah, Sitting by the window, binding shoes,"