Recollections as a Source of History: A Paper Read by Edward L. Pierce Before the Massachusetts Historical Society, March 12, 1896 (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Pierce, Edward Lillie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0365361429 ISBN 13: 9780365361428

Publisher: Forgotten Books, 2018

Synopsis

Excerpt from Recollections as a Source of History: A Paper Read by Edward L. Pierce Before the Massachusetts Historical Society, March 12, 1896

One need not be as old as seventy-nine to distrust himself in this respect. If any one of us were to have all his letters written in youth and early manhood brought to him, he would find in them vivid pictures of some scenes which he had wholly forgotten and could not, even with the assistance of the written account, recall, and of other scenes which lay in his mind very differently. From the way in which he described them at the time.

Retentiveness of memory in persons of equal intelligence varies greatly. Some retain only general impressions, while others retain a firm hold on details. When I used in the seventies to ask Mr, Longfellow about things occurring in the thirties and forties, he would often say, You had better ask Hillard. The latter was remarkable for the freshness and accuracy of his recollections; and the same may be said of the late Judge Hoar.

One frailty which perplexes advancing years is the incapa city to distinguish between what one has seen and what one has only heard; and the result is that the two kinds of knowl edge are hopelessly mixed together. The late Henry W. Paine, while still holding a foremost rank at the bar, used to describe a scene witnessed by him when Daniel Webster pre sented publicly to Charles Sumner, then a' youth, a prize for an essay. Mr. Paine on reading Sumner's Memoir (vol. I. Pp. 73, 74) discovered that he had fallen into an anachronism, as the presentation took place before he and Sumner met as stu dents at the Harvard Law School. Happening to see his old comrade at the school, Wendell Phillips, enter the court room, he communicated to him his error, saying, What a wretched thing, Wendell, the memory is! The explana tion is, that Mr. Paine had in early life heard the Story, and, telling it often, had come to believe that he himself Was present.

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Edition details

• Publisher: Forgotten Books
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0365361429
• ISBN 13: 9780365361428
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 26