His own
Stoic words about the limitations of his eyesight are
characteristic: "By reading for one minute, and then resting for
an equal time, this alternate process may gradually be continued
for about half an hour. Then, after a sufficient interval, it may
be repeated, often three or four times in the course of the day.
By this means nearly the whole of the volume now offered has been
composed." There is no more piteous or inspiring story of a fight
against odds in the history of literature.
For after his fortieth year the enemy gave way a little, and book
after book somehow got itself written. There they stand upon the
shelves, a dozen of them--"The Pioneers of France," "The Jesuits
in North America," "La Salle," "The Old Regime," "Frontenac,"
"Montcalm and Wolfe," "A Half-Century of Conflict"--the boy's
dream realized, the man's long warfare accomplished. The history
of the forest, as Parkman saw it, was a pageant with the dark
wilderness for a background, and, for the actors, taciturn
savages, black-robed Jesuits, intrepid explorers, soldiers of
France--all struggling for a vast prize, all changing, passing,
with a pomp and color unknown to wearied Europe.
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