lost nothing in his hands. He remembered, as was said by the speaker of the evening, until later years with a readiness and precision that was absolutely humiliating to those who were some years younger. I never was made to feel that his stories grew with time. You could hear them at intervals of a year and they would be no longer at the end than they were at the beginning. He had a delicate humor and extraordinary delineation. I have also had the honor of having had in my hands that marvellous book of the record of his reading. I think I never encountered its equal, and in view of the fact that a large part of his life was spent in active and sometimes complicated business relations, it was all the more extraordinary.

I wrote at one time in a book-I find it always safe to quote one's own books, for in spite of the kindness of friends one seldom finds his quotations recognized - this I wrote:

"There are books in the English language so vast that the ordinary reader recoils before their text and their footnotes. Such, for instance, is Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,' containing substantially the history of the whole world for thirteen centuries. When that author dismissed the last page of his task, on June 27, 1787, in the historic garden at Geneva, having arranged that it was to appear before the public at once in four different languages, is it not possible that he may have felt some natural misgiving as to whether any one person would ever read the whole of it? We know him to have predicted that Fielding's 'Tom Jones' would outlast the palace of the Escurial and the imperial eagle of Austria, but he recorded no similar claim for his own work. The statesman, Fox, to be sure, pronounced Gibbon's book to be 'immortal,' simply beause, as he said, no man in the world could do without it; and Sheridan added, with undue levity, that if not luminous it was at least voluminous. But modern readers, as a rule, consult it; they do not read it. It is, at best, a tool-chest.

"Yet there lies before me what is, perhaps, the most remarkable manuscript catalogue of books read that can be found in the Englishspeaking world, this being the work of Bartlett at eighty-three, who began life by reading a verse of the Bible aloud to his mother when three years old, had gone through the whole of it by the time he was nine, and then went on to grapple with all the rest of literature, upon which he is still at work.

"His vast catalogue of books read begins with 1837, and continues up to the present day, thus covering much more than half a century, a course of reading not yet finished, and in which Gibbon is but an incident. One finds, for instance, at intervals such items as these:

"Gibbon's "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," read twice between 1856 and 1894; Gibbon's "Decline and Fall" third reading, 1895; Gibbon's "Decline and Fall," vols. 1 and 2, fourth reading;' followed soon after by 'Gibbon, vols. 3-6, fourth reading; Gibbon, vols. 7-8, fourth reading.' What are a thousand readings of Tom Jones' compared with a series of feats like this? And there is a certain satisfaction to those who find themselves staggered by the contemplation of such labor, when they read elsewhere on the list the recorded confession that this man of wonderful toil occasionally stooped so far as cheerfully to include ‘That Frenchman,' and 'Mr. Barnes of New York.

There are other things which I have written about John Bartlett at different times, and one especially in the Nation not long after his death, and I would venture to quote from this,

"There came, however, an event in Bartlett's life which put an end to all direct labors, when his wife and co-worker began to lose her mental clearness, and all this joint task had presently to be laid aside. For a time he tried to continue his work unaided; and she, with unwearied patience and gentleness, would sit quietly beside him without interference. But the malady increased, until she passed into that melancholy condition described so powerfully by his neighbor and intimate friend, James Russell Lowell — though drawing from a different example in his poem of The Darkened Mind,' one of the most impressive, I think, of his poems. While Bartlett still continued his habit of reading, the writing had to be surrendered. His eyesight being ere long affected, the reading also was abandoned, and after his wife's death he lived for a year or two one of the loneliest of lives. He grew physically lame, and could scarcely cross the room unaided. A nervous trouble in the head left him able to employ a reader less and less frequently, and finally not at all. In a large and homelike room, containing one of the most charming private libraries in Cambridge — the books being beautifully bound and lighting up the walls instead of darkening them— he spent most of the day reclining on the sofa,

externally unemployed, simply because employment was impossible. He had occasional visitors, and four of his old friends formed what they called a 'Bartlett Club,' and met at his house one evening in every week." [It is possible we may have a representative of this group here; I wish we might have.] "Sometimes days passed, however, without his receiving a visitor, he living alone in a room once gay with the whist-parties which he and Lowell had formerly organized and carried on.

"His cheerful courage, however, was absolutely unbroken, and he met every casual guest with a look of sunshine. His voice and manner, always animated and cheerful, remained the same. He had an inexhaustible store of anecdotes and reminiscences, and could fill the hour with talk without showing exhaustion. Seldom going out of the house, unable to take more than very short drives, he dwelt absolutely in the past, remembered the ways and deeds of all Cambridge and Boston literary men, spoke genially of all and with malice of none. He had an endless fund of good stories of personal experience. Were one to speak to him, for instance, of Edward Everett, well known for the elaboration with which he prepared his addresses, Bartlett would instantly recall how Everett once came into his bookstore in search of a small pocket Bible to be produced dramatically before a rural audience in a lecture; but in this case finding none small enough chose a copy of Hoyle's 'Games' instead, which was produced with due impressiveness when the time came. Then he would describe the same Edward Everett whom he once called upon and found busy in drilling a few Revolutionary soldiers who were to be on the platform during Everett's famous Concord oration, and whom he drilled first to stand up and be admired at a certain point of the oration and then to sit down again, by signal, that the audience might rather rise in their honor. Unfortunately, one man, who was totally deaf, forgot the instructions and absolutely refused to sit down, because the 'squire' had told him to stand up. In a similar way, Bartlett's unimpaired memory held the whole circle of eminent men among whom he had grown up from youth, and a casual visitor might infer from his cheery manner that these comrades had just left the room. During his last illness, mind and memory seemed equally unclouded until the very end, and almost the last words he spoke were a caution to his faithful nurse not to forget to pay the small

sum due to a man who had been at work on his driveway, he naming the precise sum due in dollars and cents.

"He died on the morning of December 3, 1905, aged 85. Was his career, after all, more to be pitied or envied? He lived a life of prolonged and happy labor among the very choicest gems of human thought, and died with patient fortitude after all visible human joys had long been laid aside."

THE CHAIRMAN: Colonel Higginson has referred to the "Bartlett Club," and has explained his wish that we might have a member of this "Bartlett Club" here. Fortunately we have Mr. Woodward Emery to tell us about the "Bartlett Club," why it was organized, what it has done, and I trust also about his own share in it as well as what the other members did.

ADDRESS OF WOODWARD EMERY

I HAVE been asked to say a few words to-night in memory of John Bartlett.

I propose to speak of him as a friend and neighbor. We lived in the same neighborhood for more than a quarter of a century, during which time we became better and better acquainted until within the past decade I have enjoyed his intimate friendship. You all know him to have been a man of rare parts, possessing so many of the excellencies of human nature as to entitle him to high rank among his fellowmen. His pure friendliness is a characteristic all will easily recognize. It was almost as wide as his human sympathy, which though intelligently restrained responded to all misfortune. It gave him that touch of nature which made him kin to all. I recall his telling of the interest he ever had in the College students in the old days of his bookstore in Harvard Square; how he encouraged them in their taste for books and allowed. them to carry away whatever they fancied, but he said they always came back and paid for what they had taken. His generous and sympathetic treatment evidently made them feel that they had incurred a debt of honor.

At request he once signed the College bond of a young stranger from the south, who later came, having been at College about a year and a half, and deposited the amount of the bond. Shortly thereafter the youth disappeared, leaving unnumbered debts behind, but his trusting bondsman was secured. He understood their natures!

His sense of humor was keen and his wit responsive and unfailing, which when linked to his prodigious memory lent a brilliancy to his conversation rarely equalled. He had met and known the keen wits and sparkling intellects of his day and generation, and many an anecdote of interesting personality, which enlivened an hour of intercourse, can never again be told in his inimitable way. He possessed the rare faculty in a story-teller of seldom if ever repeating his stories; which in one whose conversation was replete with anecdote and reminiscence was remarkable.

His tastes and fancies were with books, his business was with books and the making of books, and this brought him in contact with the bookish class. He was a painstaking, untiring student, one who if not a creator himself made familiar to all the beauties of the greatest creators, and the readers of Shakespeare his debtors for all time.

But withal he loved things outside the library. The recreations of a man form part of his character and a knowledge of them helps in our estimate and appreciation of him. When, therefore, we think of Mr. Bartlett as an ardent fisherman, a lover of the game of whist, and a fine chess player, we feel that a strong side-light is thrown upon his life. He loved the old-fashioned game of whist and he played it well, as I know from many an evening's contest as his opponent. Every winter for thirty years he, James Russell Lowell, John Holmes, and Charles F. Choate played an evening a week together, except while Mr. Lowell was absent as foreign ambassador.

His game of chess was ingenious, original, and aggressive, and he played it, as he did most things, with superior skill.

A man's estimate and appreciation of the gentler sex is a safe measure of the delicacy and quality of his nature, and that Mr. Bartlett held women in the highest esteem his many contributions to their happiness and pleasure give testimony. His attitude toward them was distinguished by a tender, respectful graciousness of