The Last Leaf / Observations, during Seventy-Five Years, of Men and Events in America and Europe

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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
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