A reserve had finally to be called in.)
But I should say that this double classification intimated rather the
genuine human interest of his story, appealing alike to men and to boys
(as the greatest of human writings do)--a work "for all mankind and for
all time."
But I should go beyond this. His books are not merely of elemental
entertainment. He has seized the most fundamental, far-reaching, and
consequential of themes. He found going on in his forest, of which he set
out to write, not merely flame-lighted scalpings and official rapacities
and picturesque maraudings and quixotic pageants and the like. His theme
was even greater than the mere gathering of all these raids and rapacities
and maraudings and pageants into an informed racial, national struggle for
the possession of a continent. It was nothing less than the grappling, out
on the frontier of the world, between two principles of organized human
life. The forests are so demanding, the incidents so stirring in
themselves, that many have doubtless missed the high theme that expressed
itself there.
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