NEW YORK
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
MCMXII
Copyright, 1912, By
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY
REMEMBRANCE
No regret is vain. It is sorrow that spins the thread,—softer than moonshine, thinner than fragrance, stronger than death,—the Gleipnir-chain of the Greater Memory.
PREFACE
When Death has set his seal on an eminent man's career, there is a not unnatural curiosity to know something of his life, as revealed by himself, particularly in letters to intimate friends. "All biography ought, as much as possible, to be autobiography," says Stevenson, and of all autobiographical material, letters are the most satisfactory. Generally written on the impulse of the moment, with no idea of subsequent publication, they come, as it were, like butter fresh from the churning with the impress of the mind of the writer stamped distinctly upon them. One letter of George Sand's written to Flaubert, or one of Goethe's to Frau von Stein, or his friend Stilling, is worth pages of embellished reminiscences.