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Critics of exact knowledge such as Justin Winsor, for instance find limitations in Parkman's books that may impair the permanence of his fame, but I suspect that his is the only work in American history that cannot and will not be written over again. The reason of it is that he had a unique life which has permeated his narrative, giving it the stamp of originality.
See also Parkman's "Oregon Trail" for an instance of a party of Missouri backwoodsmen who made a characteristic failure in an attempt on a buffalo band. An English engineer made a rude survey or table of distances of the Ohio in 1766. Collins states that in 1770 and 1772 Washington surveyed small tracts in what is now northeastern Kentucky; but this is more than doubtful.
In a book of Parkman memorabilia of various kinds which I found in the Harvard Library, I happened one day upon a few scraps of paper which furnish illustration of the first steps of the process paper on which were notes made in Parkman's own hand: "Deserts covered with bones of buffalo and elk"; "No sign of man from Fort Union to Fort Mackenzie"; "White clay, cactus dried up, grasshoppers"; "Poplars, wild roses, gooseberries"; "prairie dogs, heat, aridity"; "extraordinary castellated mountains, stone walls, etc. above Fort Union"; "in 1832 Blackfeet are said to have killed 58 whites, three years before, 80"; "Blackfeet do not eat dogs Blackfeet Societies beaver traps lent to Blackfeet"; "wood near Fort Clark chiefly poplar"; "fossils terres mauvaises"; "maize cultivated by Mandans"; "catching the war eagle"; "Mandans etc. agricultural tribes"; "wolf-pits described"; "Exceptional cold Ft.
The deliciousness of her rest was in the sense of its being right she should take it; she could best serve Karl by resting until she was her strongest self. Her room was so quiet and restful, the bed so comfortable, and Mrs. Rolfe, Dr. Parkman's old nurse, so good to her.
Parkman's hands, only it seemed they were not human hands at all, but some infallible instrument, an instrument with an unconquerable soul, and then everything was dancing before her eyes, her ears were pounding harder and harder, her knees sinking, everything swaying, some one had hold of her, and some one else, a great many miles away was saying "Take her out!"
The recent biography of Parkman emphasizes the idea which we get from his works that only a man who lived in the virgin forests of this country and loved them, and who had traveled in the far West as a pioneer, with Indians for companions, could have done that work. Parkman's experience cannot be had by any one again, and he brought to bear the wealth of it in that fifty years' occupation of his.
The pity of it that he could not have seen Dorothy Parkman's eyes looking after him! There was apparently no limit to Daniel Burton's enthusiastic cooperation with Dorothy Parkman on the matter of establishing a workroom for the blind. He set to work with her at once.
Although differing so widely, they were homogeneous in that all were workers; they touched many things, their talk live with differences. "How do you like it?" asked Ernestine, following Dr. Parkman's eyes to her favourite bronze, a copy of Mercie's Gloria Victis, which she had unpacked just that day and given a place of honour on the mantel. "It's so Christian," he objected laughingly.
For the student there is, in its season, no better place than the saddle, and no better companion than the rifle or the oar." The evil that was done was due to Parkman's highly irritable organism, which spurred him to excess in everything he undertook. The first special sign of the mischief he was doing to himself and his health appeared in a weakness of sight.
"He jest is," nodded Susan with unflattering emphasis. "If you'd heard him when he jest persisted that he wouldn't have anybody that was Dorothy Parkman's father even look at his eyes you'd have thought so, I guess. An' why, he even wrote about it 'way back last Christmas I mean, when he first told us about you.
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