y pleasant
memories of these highly distinctive personalities. Major Powell
appealed to me with especial power by reason of his heroic past. He had
been an engineer under Grant at Vicksburg and was very helpful to me in
stating the methods of the siege, but his experiences after the war were
still more romantic. Though a small man and with but one arm, he had
nevertheless led a fleet of canoes through the Grand Canon of the
Colorado--the first successful attempt at navigating that savage and
sullen river, and his laconic account of it enormously impressed me. He
was, at this time, the well-known head of the Ethnological Bureau, and I
frequently saw him at the Cosmos Club, grouped with Langley, Merriam,
Howard and other of my scientific friends. He was a somber, silent, and
rather unkempt figure, with the look of a dreaming lion on his face. It
was hard to relate him with the man who had conquered the Grand Canon of
the Colorado.

His direct antithesis was Edward Eggleston, whose residence was a small
brick house just back of the Congressional Library. Eggleston, humorous,
ready of speech, was usually surrounded by an attentive circle of
delighted listeners and I often drew near to share his monologue. He was
a handsome man, tall and shapely with abundant gray hair and a full
beard, and was especially learned in American early history. "Edward
loves to monologue," his friends smilingly said as if in criticism, but
to me his talk was always interesting.

We became friends on the basis of a common love for the Western prairie,
which he, as a "circuit rider" in Minnesota had minutely explored. I
told him, gladly and in some detail, of my first reading of _The Hoosier
School-master_, and in return for my interest he wrote a full page of
explanation on the fly leaf of a copy which I still own and value
highly, for I regard him now, as I did then, as one of the brave
pioneers of distinctive Middle Border fiction.

Roosevelt considered me something of a Populist, (as I was), and I well
remember a dinner in Senator Lodge's house where he and Henry Adams
heckled me for an hour or more in order to obtain a statement of what I
thought "ailed" Kansas, Nebraska and Dakota. They all held the notion
that I understood these farmer folk well enough to reflect their secret
antagonisms, which I certainly did. I recall getting pretty hot in my
plea, but Roosevelt seemed rather proud of me as I warmly defended my
former neighbor. "The man