In Parkman "the wheel has come full circle," and a movement that
began with expansion of self ended in hard Spartan repression,
even in inhibition of emotion.
Becoming "enamoured of the woods" at sixteen, Parkman chose his
life work at eighteen, and he was a man who could say proudly: "I
have not yet abandoned any plan which I ever formed." "Before the
end of the sophomore year," he wrote in his autobiography, "my
various schemes had crystallized into a plan of writing the story
of what was then known as the 'Old French War,' that is, the war
that ended in the conquest of Canada, for here, as it seemed to
me, the forest drama was more stirring and the forest stage more
thronged with appropriate actors than in any other passage of our
history. It was not till some years later that I enlarged the
plan to include the whole course of the American conflict between
France and England, or, in other words, the history of the
American forest: for this was the light in which I regarded it.
My theme fascinated me, and I was haunted with wilderness images
day and night.
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