Middlebury register. (Middlebury, Vt.) 1886-1937, 1893-07-07
THE LITERARY LETTER.
Popularity of Personal RecoIIections. of
Great Men.

Especial Correspondence
NEW YORK, April 25.-The only officers
associated with Mr.. Lincoln in the admin
istration Of the government who are now
living are Mr.. McCulloch, who was comp
troller of the currency and Mr.. Chittenden,
who was register of the treasury, and each
of them has written a book containing rem.
iniscences of Mr.. Lincoln and the other
great men who shaped affairs at the period
of the civil war. Mr.. McCullochs book
was confined mainly to anecdotes and rec
objections of financial nature, while Mr..
Chittenden's went quite extremely into the
personality of Mr.. Lincoln and contained
some of the most important revelations Of
the methods, habits and inner life of the
great president.
So wide was the sale of Mr.. Chittenden's
recollections that he has collected some
new anecdotes and "reminiscences, which
have recently been issued from the press,
and the publishers have already found that
they were not mistaken in their estimate Of
public interest in these matters. The book
is likely to pass into a second edition within
a month of its first appearance.
Mr.. Blaine once, chatting with the writ
er, said that it was in looking over the rec
objections of Henry A. Wise, who was gov
ernor of Virginia at the time of the John
Brown excitement, that the suggestion
came to him of the immense value which
these books of personal recollections would
be in the future for the historian who
sought to write n dispassionate and critical
story of the first century of the existence OF
the United States, and from that sugges-
ton came another, which, being turned
over in his mind, led him to put into per-
rane.t shape his own experiences in pub,
lie life.
Colonel Alexander X. Mcclure, one OF
the great editors of the United States, hav-
ing seen hundreds of transient newspaper
articles purporting to give some narration
of Abraham Lincoln as a politician, and
having personal knowledge that many Of
these articles contained errors and led to
false estimations of Lincoln, determined to
collect together his own recollections of
and experiences with Mr.. Lincoln, some of
which were associated with very important
epochs in Mr. Lincoln's life. Colonel Nc
Clure therefore published what in some re-
spects is the most important and in many
respects the most interesting volume asso-
ciated with Mr.. Lincolns career. 1t re-
veals in style suitable for popular read
ing that side of Mr. Lincoln as a poll
tician with which Americans had been I'M
familiar, and Henry Adams, the historian,
is said to have remarked of this book that
it would be a gold mine for that man who
years hence when the time is ripe for such
a work should undertake to write the his
( tory Of the civil war and of the men who
took part in it and brought about the re-
suits which flowed from it.
/ The publishers say that these volumes of
personal recollections written by men who
had a part in tie affairs of which they
write are not only important as furnishing
very valuable information for future his
tory, but are also very popular, as the great
sale of some Of them indicates. Mr.. Blaine's
and General Grants memoirs touched the
high water mark of such popularity, but
the extraordinary interesting recollections
of the late Sunset Cox have had wide and
continuing sale. Mr.. Chittenden's and Mr..
McCulloch's books find a steady market,