The Last Leaf Observations, during Seventy-five Years, of Men and Events in America and Europe By James Kendall Hosmer, LL.D. Member of the Minnesota Historical Society, Corresponding Member of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the Colonial Society of Massachusetts Author of "A Short History of German Literature," "The Story of the Jews," the Lives of Samuel Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Sir Henry Vane, etc. 1912 FOREWORD Standing on the threshold of my eightieth year, stumbling badly, moreover, through the mutiny, well justified, of a pair of worn-out eyes, I, a veteran maker of books, must look forward to the closing of an over-long series. I retain in my memory certain films, which record impressions of long ago. Can I not possibly develop and present these film records for a moving picture of the men and events of an eventful period? We old story-tellers do our talking under a heavy handicap. Homer, long ago, found us garrulous, and compared us to cicadas chirping unprofitably in the city-gate. In the modern time, too, Dr. Holmes, ensconced in smug youth, could "sit and grin" at one of our kind as he "Totters o'er the ground With his cane." He thought "His breeches and all that Were so queer." The "all that" is significant. To the callow young doctor, men of our kind were throughout queered, and so, too, think the spruce and jaunty company who are shouldering us so fast out of the front place. In their thought we are more than depositors of last leaves, in fact we are last leaves ourselves, capable in the green possibly of a pleasant murmur, but in the dry with no voice but a rattle prophetic of winter. I hope Dr. Holmes lived to repent his grin. At any rate he lived to refute the notion that youthful fire and white hairs exclude each other. If we must totter, what ground we have to totter over, with two generations and more behind us! The ground is ours. We only have looked into the faces of the great actors, and have taken part in the epoch-making events. As I unroll my panorama I may totter, but I hope I shall not dodder.