accurately is a fine power. He delved more
deeply himself perhaps than many of his critics have been willing to
acknowledge, but I incline to say that his main service to history was
in detecting with unusual insight the subtle relations of cause
and effect, links which other and sometimes very able men failed
adequately to recognise. In a high sense he was indeed a populariser.
He wore upon himself like an ample garment a splendid erudition under
which he moved, however, not at all oppressed or trammelled. Much of
the lore of Greece, Rome, the Orient, and also of modern peoples was
as familiar to him as the contents of the morning papers. With acumen
he selected and his memory retained; the cells of his capacious brain
somehow held it ready for instant use. With good discrimination he
could touch lightly or discourse profoundly as occasion required,
his learning and insight always telling effectively, either at the
breakfast-table of the plain citizen, or in the pages of the school
text-book. "John," said such a plain man the other day to a friend who
also had been in touch with Fiske, "the biggest thing that ever came
into your life or mine was when that broad thinker familiarly darkened
our doors." The two men stood reverently under John Fiske's portrait,
the autograph signature underneath seeming in a way to connect the
living with the dead, acknowledging the force of the personality which
had made real to them as nothing else had ever done the deepest and
finest things.

John Fiske was often a guest in my home and I have sat, though less
frequently, with him in his library in Berkeley Street in Cambridge,
the flowers from the conservatory sending their perfumes among the
crowded books and the south wind breathing pleasantly from the garden
which had been Longfellow's, in the rear, to the garden of Howells in
front. His passion for music was scarcely less than his interest in
speculation and history. He knew well the great composers, and had
himself composed. Though the master of no instrument, he could touch
the piano with feeling. He had a pleasant baritone voice, and nothing
gave him more refreshment after a week of study or lecturing than to
pour himself out in song. His accompanist had need not only of great
technical skill but of stout vertebrae, and strong wrists; for
hours at a time the piano stool must be occupied while the difficult
melodies of various lands were unriddled and interpreted. Those were
int