(The main facts of Oak's life, as learned by Mrs. Victor, are as follows: Henry Labbeus Oak was born at Garland, Maine, in 1844. His ancestry--including the family names of Oak, Merriam, Hastings, Hill, and Smith--was entirely American from a period preceding the Revolutionary War, being originally English and Welsh. He was educated at the public and private schools of his native town until, in 1861, he entered Bowdoin College, and was graduated at Dartmouth in the class of 1865. During his college course, he taught in the public and high schools of different towns in Maine; and after graduation, for a year in an academy at Morristown, New Jersey. Mr. Oak came to California by steamer in 1866, and, after some attempts at commercial life, broken by a long illness, again became a teacher. A year was spent as principal of the public school at Haywards, and as instructor in the collegiate institute at Napa, and in the spring of 1868, he became office editor of the _Occident_, a Presbyterian paper which the Bancroft house was then publishing for an association. According to Mr. Bancroft (Lit. Ind. 219), "the whole burden of the journal gradually fell on him." But when, owing to a disagreement with the religious association, the firm declined to publish the paper any longer, the young editor was left without employment. In the meantime a somewhat erratic Englishman named Bosquetti had succeeded Knight as custodian of the Bancroft library, and Oak was appointed to assist him. Upon his decamping a few months later, at the end of 1868, Mr. Oak was appointed to the position.) The beginning of a classification of the material in the library had been made by Mr. Knight, who saved clippings and arranged them in scrap-books and boxes. It now became Oak's duty to superintend the extraction of material from the volumes in his custody and to catalogue new books as they came in. In May, 1871, he prepared for publication by the firm, two guide-books for tourists. It was at the same time that Mr. Bancroft took another step toward the history plan.