soul,--as though he had no slightest desire for the pleasant fame which
a successful book gives to a young man. Think of it, O race of
scribblers, to whom a month in the printer's hands seems a monstrous
delay, and who bore publishers with half-finished manuscripts, as
impatient hens begin, untimely, to cackle before the egg is laid.

That a young man, not thirty-three when he died, should have written
these volumes, so full of life, so full of strange adventure, of wide
reading, telling of such large and thorough knowledge of books and men
and Nature, is a remarkable fact in itself. That he should have let the
manuscripts lie in his desk has probably surprised the world more. But,
much as he wrote, Winthrop, perhaps, always felt that his true life was
not that of the author, but of the actor. He has often told me that it
was a pleasure to write,--probably such a pleasure as it is to an old
tar to spin his yarns. His mind was active, stored with the accumulated
facts of a varied experience. How keen an observer of Nature he was,
those who have read "John Brent" or the "Canoe and Saddle" need not be
told; how appreciative an observer of every-day life, was shown in that
brilliant story which appeared in these pages some eighteen months ago,
under the title of "Love and Skates." Our American life lost by his
death one who, had he lived, would have represented it, reported it to
the world, soul and body together; for he comprehended its spirit, as
well as saw its outer husk; he was in sympathy with all its
manifestations.

That quick, intelligent eye saw everything; that kindly, sympathetic
spirit comprehended always the soul of things; and no life, however
common, rugged, or coarse, was to him empty. If he added always
something of his own nobility of heart, if he did not pry out with
prurient eyes the meannesses of life around him, the picture he drew was