NOTE

There will be few more such collections of letters as Barrett Wendell's — so voluminous, and all in manuscript. Now that the world has taken to time-saving through dictation, nobody appears to have the leisure for extensive correspondence. This was one of the constant expressions of Wendell's devotion to his friends, and in his letters not only that characteristic but many others stand clearly forth.

Before the material of this book was placed in my hands more than a year ago, Mrs. Wendell had sought and secured many letters from their recipients. To this collection substantial additions have since been made. Yet there are many friends — such as W. B. Shubrick Clymer, T. Russell Sullivan, and Arlo Bates, to name but three — quite unrepresented in the correspondence. In the processes of elimination required for making a book of reasonable proportions, the mere mention of many other friends has disappeared. The richness and scope of the human background of Wendell's life are none the less manifest. Against this background his intellectual and spiritual concerns, his highly distinctive personal traits, are revealed as fully as possible in his own words.

The book has been prepared for publication chiefly in the Boston Athenaeum, a library with which Wendell himself was intimately identified. To its librarian, Mr. C. K. Bolton, and to the members of its staff, I am much indebted for specific and general help in the work. For

the cooperation of Mrs. Wendell, notably generous in its freedom from even the suggestion of restrictions of any kind, I would record a peculiar gratitude.

M. A. DeW. H. Boston, 26 May^ 1924