hen felt to be an embarrassment. One would like to
know, for instance, while reading about the primitive theatrical times,
when actors sailed the western rivers in flatboats, and shot beasts and
birds on the bank, precisely the extent and limits of that period. Nor
is this the only queer aspect of the dramatic past that might be
illumined. The total environment of a man's life is almost equally
important with the life itself--being, indeed, the scenery amid which
the action passes--and a good method for the writing of a biography is
that which sharply defines the successive periods of childhood, youth,
manhood, and age, and, while depicting the development of the individual
from point to point, depicts also the entire field through which he
moves, and the mutations, affecting his life, that occur in the historic
and social fabric around him. Jefferson, while he has painted vigorously
and often happily, on a large canvas, has left many spaces empty and
others but thinly filled. The reader who accompanies him may,
nevertheless, with a little care, piece out the story so as to perceive
it as a sequent, distinct, harmonious, and rounded narrative. Meanwhile
the companionship of this heedless historian is delightful--for whether
as actor, painter, or writer, Jefferson steadily exerts the charm of a
genial personality. You are as one walking along a country road, on a
golden autumn day, with a kind, merry companion, who knows all about
the trees that fringe your track and the birds that flit through their
branches, and who beguiles the way with many a humorous tale and many a
pleasant remembrance, now impressing your mind by the sagacity of his
reflections, now touching your heart by some sudden trait of sentiment
or pathos, and always pleasing and satisfying you with the consciousness
of a sweet, human, broad, charitable, piquant nature. Although an
autobiographer Jefferson is not egotistical, and although a moralist he
is not a bore. There is a tinge of the Horatian mood in him--for his
reader often becomes aware of that composed, sagacious, half-droll,
quizzical mind that indicates, with grave gentleness, the folly of
ambition, the vanity of riches, the value of the present hour, the
idleness of borrowing trouble, the blessing of the golden medium in
fortune, the absurdity of flatterers, and the comfort of keeping a
steadfast spirit amid the inevitable vicissitudes of this mortal state.

Jefferson has memories of a boyhood