Working under such conditions he makes
this report, 1868, of progress: "Most of the material is collected or
within reach; another volume, on the Jesuits of North America, is one-
third written; another, on the French explorers of the Great West, is half
written; while a third, devoted to the checkered career of Comte de
Frontenac, is partially arranged for composition." During this period he
had made many journeys in the United States and Canada for material, and
had been four times in Europe.... He wonders as to the advantage of this
tortoise pace, but says in conclusion that, "irksome as may be the
requirements of conditions so anomalous, they are far less oppressive than
the necessity they involve of being busied with the Past when the Present
has claims so urgent, and of holding the pen with the hand that should
have grasped the sword" (for he was greatly disappointed that he could not
enter the army at the time of the Civil War).
I have made this rather extensive summary of the singular autobiography--
and largely in the author's own words--not to prepare your minds for
lenient judgments of his work, but to inform them of the tenacious purpose
of the man whose infirmities of the knees kept him most of his life from
the wild forest trails and streams and compelled him to a wheel-chair in
gardens of tame roses; whose weakness of the eyes allowed him but
inadequate vision of the splendor of the woods and even robbed him of the
intimacy of books; whose malady of mind kept him ever in terror of devils
more fierce than the inhuman tortures of Jogues and Brebeuf--a tenacious
purpose that wrought its youth-selected, self-appointed work, and so well,
so splendidly, so thoroughly that it needs never to be done again.
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