THEODORE WINTHROP'S WRITINGS.


"The first time I saw Theodore Winthrop," said one to me a few days ago,
"he came into my office with a common friend. They were talking as they
entered, and Winthrop said, 'Yes, the fellows who came over in the
Mayflower can't afford to do that!'

"'There,' thought I to myself, 'there's another of the Mayflower men! I
wish to my soul that ship had sunk on her voyage out!' But when I came
to know him, I quickly learned that with him origin was not a matter of
vain pride, but a fact inciting him to all nobleness of thought and
life, and spurring him on to emulate the qualities of his ancestor."

That is to say, he was not a prig, or a snob, but a gentleman. And if he
remembered that he "came over in the Mayflower," it was because he felt
that that circumstance bound him to higher enterprises, to better work,
than other men's. And he believed in his heart, as he wrote in the
opening chapter of "John Brent," that "deeds of the heroic and chivalric
times do not utterly disdain our day. There are men," he continues, "as
ready to gallop for love and strike for love now as in the age of
Amadis." Ay, and for a nobler love than the love of woman--for love of
country, and of liberty--he was ready to strike, and to die.

Ready to do, when the time came; but also--what required a greater
soul--ready to wait in cheerful content till the fitting time should
come. Think of these volumes lying in his desk at home, and he, their
author, going about his daily tasks and pleasures, as hearty and as
unrepining as though no whisper of ambition had ever come to his