Captain Whittaker's "Life of General Custer"[14] can no more be estimated by fixed biographical rules than the meteoric career of his hero can be compared to the regular and peaceful lives of other men. Not often, perhaps, does the biographer devote himself with such enthusiastic abandon to his task, and seldom is there to be found within the covers of a single volume such an infinite variety of incident and personal reminiscence. The chapters which deal with the early youth of General Custer are exceedingly interesting photographs, as it were, of a certain phase of American domestic and academic life. The characteristics of the child, the sorrows of the "plebe," and the aspirations and experiences of the cadet, are faithfully narrated. The first service of the subaltern, and his initiation into the perils and responsibilities of an officer in time of war, are interwoven with Custer's own recollections of his generals and their campaigns. We are irresistibly reminded of Lever in the style of the narration, and of that dashing creature "O'Malley" in the adventures of our own dragoon. The story of General Custer's wooing is quaintly told, and shines like a bow of promise through all the clouds of his stormy career; it is a romance by itself. Apropos of the charge which we are told won the boy general his star, we clip a bit of word painting which could only have been written by "one who has been there":
Were you ever in a charge—you who read this now by the winter fireside, long after the bones of the slain have turned to dust, when peace covers the land? If not, you have never known the fiercest pleasure of life. The chase is nothing to it; the most headlong hunt is tame in comparison. In the chase the game flees, and you shoot; here the game shoots back, and every leap of the charging steed is a peril escaped or dashed aside. The sense of power and audacity that possesses the cavalier, the unity with his steed, both are perfect. The horse is as wild as the man: with glowing eyeballs and red nostrils, he rushes frantically forward at the very top of his speed, with huge bounds as different from the rhythmic precision of the gallop as the sweep of the hurricane is from the rustle of the breeze. Horse and rider are drunk with excitement; feeling and seeing nothing but the cloud of dust, the scattered flying figures; conscious of only one mad desire, to reach them, to smite, smite, smite!
The author of this book is too much of an artist, too much of a poet, perhaps, to divest his battle descriptions of anything that is doubtful in fact, if only it is eulogistic of his hero or picturesque in its nature. He has an eye for color, and prefers to have his picture a showy and effective one even if some of the accessories are purely of the imagination. We cannot consider the letters of the "Times" special correspondent as a reliable history of the events immediately following the battle of Gettysburg, although they are undoubtedly glowing bulletins of the exploits of General Kilpatrick and his temporary subordinate, General Custer. Nor can we accept the statement of the Detroit "Evening News" for an entirely correct report of the grand review at Washington, in 1865, when he hands down to posterity that sober-sided old warrior, Provost Marshal General Patrick, as one who "had ridden down the broad avenue bearing his reins in his teeth, and his sabre in his only hand"; although the Mazeppa act in which Custer immediately followed is not overdrawn by the "News," because that would be "painting the lily." There are several other extracts from newspapers of a similar nature, but we have not space to refer to them. Captain Whittaker's book offers material for that "coming historian," but cannot be looked upon as an entirely safe historical authority. Colonel Chesney says, "Accept no one-sided statement from any national historian who rejects what is distasteful in his authorities, and uses only what suits his own theory.... Gather carefully from actual witnesses, high and low, such original material as they offer for the construction of the narrative. This once being safely proved, judge critically and calmly what was the conduct of the chief actor; how far his insight, calmness, personal control over others, and right use of his means were concerned in the result." The great fault of this otherwise attractive biography is the unwise partisanship which, as Captain Whittaker shows, was so injurious to his hero in life and which even in death does not forsake him. At page 282 Captain Whittaker says of alleged envy and jealousy of Custer in certain quarters:
A great deal of this was due to the boasting and sarcastic remarks of his injudicious friends, who could not be satisfied with praising their own chief without depreciating others.
Thus the author, after warning his readers of the pit into which so many others have fallen, proceeds in the most inconsistent manner to fall into it himself.
Had we space, we could here make many extracts entirely free from the foregoing objections. Many new descriptions of Indian life, never before in print, are here given; some excellent essays on the prominent phases of American military life; and many anecdotes and biographical sketches of the officers who fell with Custer on the "Little Big-horn," with portraits, are also given. The volume is a very large, handsome octavo, illustrated by two portraits of General Custer (one an excellent likeness on steel), and many full-page woodcuts, and seems especially seasonable as a holiday present. No biographical collection can be considered complete without it, and we should think it would have an especial charm to military readers. That Mrs. Custer is to receive a share of the receipts from its sale will not lessen its circulation.
Palestine is certainly an inexhaustible source of books, and Dr. Ridgaway[15] tells us the reason why. Travellers' descriptions of the grand mountain scenery, its strange deserts, its ancient customs, transmitted from the dawn of history, its trees a thousand years of age, and its mighty ruins, contribute to and intensify the interest which the Christian feels in that region alone of all the earth. Of late years this country has been the scene of systematic explorations and the theme of an important series of critical works. Dr. Ridgaway's volume deserves a place in this series, though he has little of novelty to present. But the author has produced just the book that was needed, the one which it might be supposed the first traveller there would have written. Leaving out nearly all the every-day incidents of travel, he aims to extract from each place he saw just what is of interest to the Bible student. He is to be congratulated on a rare ability to discriminate between the important and entertaining and what is matter-of-course. The plan of his journey, which was made in company with eleven others, mostly clergymen, was to follow the route of the Israelites from Egypt to Palestine, and then to visit every place made memorable by the life of Christ, besides many others of Biblical interest. He tried to be critical, and constantly discusses the pros and cons for admitting the received location of prominent points; but in this he is not very successful, and seems to decline at length into helpless acquiescence. He rejects the innovations and doubts of such men as Robinson and Baker, and acknowledges that the sacred sites have for the most part been identified. But there is a limit to even his credulity. He swallowed easily the "exact spot" where the cradle lay, but strained at the fragment of a column on which Mohammed is to sit when he judges the world, and says, "I was unable to resist the temptation to straddle it!" Perhaps the secret of Dr. Ridgaway's success is that he has omitted those rhapsodies which are natural enough amid such scenes, but which we get our fill of without going to Palestine. He is too full of the real situation to turn to fanciful imaginations, and as a consequence he gives us the best companion to the Bible which we know of. The critical results of his journey are small, but as a careful summary of what others have finally settled upon his work is authentic. A large number of engravings, of the best execution, bring the landscape and buildings vividly before us. Many of them are from Dr. Ridgaway's sketches, others from photographs, and the only fault we have to find is the omission of titles to them, an omission which is artistic, but inconvenient.
—Lieutenant Ruffner[16] does not give a very assuring picture of New Mexico, considered as a possible State in our Union. It has never prospered; its population and area of cultivated land being smaller now than three hundred years ago. As these changes are no doubt due to the operation of natural causes, about which scientific men do not agree, the immediate future of the country does not appear very flattering. Wide as the spread of westward migration has been, it has hardly affected New Mexico. Lieutenant Ruffner says: "The line once crossed, a foreign country is entered. Foreign faces and a foreign tongue are encountered." For twenty-six years the Territory has formed a part of our country, but in that time our civilization has hardly made an impression upon it. The author, without directly saying so, seems to regard the scheme for making it a State with disfavor, and his readers will agree with him. He has done his country a service by this painstaking and impartial description of a region which few but army officers know anything about.
—It is a very difficult thing nowadays to write a book of travels that can interest the general public. A hundred years ago a man who had circumnavigated the world was a remarkable object, and people would crowd to see him, and read his works with avidity. But what a change the last century has produced. Compare the difference of tone between 1776 and 1876, and then go back and compare 1676 with the former year. There is not anything like a parity of advance between the two centuries. The traveller and sailor was as much of a hero in 1776 as was the captain of the Vittoria, the last ship of Magellan's fleet when he sailed into Cadiz in 1522, having been round the earth and lost a day in the operation; just as Mr. Phileas Fogg, of later fame, gained one by going in the opposite direction. Men who have been to China and India, Australia and New Zealand, are too plentiful to-day to excite notice; and when it comes to writing books about their adventures, it is necessary to be cautious to avoid treading in old tracks and wearying the reader. The man who describes a voyage round the world to-day must be a character of interest in himself, or he will not interest his audience. The writer of the book now before us[17] possesses the qualifications for the task seldom possessed by the professional traveller, who is apt to bore one with long stories. He has the eye of a newspaper correspondent, the quick intuition as to what is or is not interesting per se, and has actually succeeded in making an interesting and readable book of three hundred pages out of a subject nearly worn out. Mr. Vincent started from New York in a clipper ship, went round the Horn to San Francisco, thence to Hawaii, where he remained some weeks, thence to New Zealand and Australia, finally to Calcutta, and thence home to New York, after a prolonged tour through India, Siam, and China. The incidents of the latter tour formed the basis of his first book, the "Land of the White Elephant," the success of which encouraged him to this, his second venture. The chief characteristic of Mr. Vincent's second work is its freshness and interest. He seems to be profoundly impressed with the truth of the saying of Thales of Miletus, that "the half is sometimes more than the whole." The taste and judgment of the author are shown by what he leaves out as much as by what he leaves in. There is hardly a dull page in the book, and in each place he only notes what is curious, leaving out of the question all that is commonplace. More could not be asked of him.