'James T. Fields.
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��as an eminently successful and saga- cious publislier, tbe friend of the most eminent at liome and abroad, an able student of belles-lettres, and a distin- guished literateur and traveller. " His correspondence at this period," writes his biographer, " includes almost without exception all the men and women of any literary note in Amer- ica."
In November, 1854, James T. Fields married Miss Annie Adams. It is recorded that " when at last the doors of home opened to him, he en- tered reverently, and with a tender- ness which grew only with the years." This home was one of many charms and of singular attractiveness. Here this always genial man was at his best. His library — of ten thousand or more volumes — was overrunning with choice editions, manuscripts, portraits, and mementoes. An "au- thor's chamber" in the fourth story, with a study adjoining, sheltered from time to time Hawthorne, Whit- tier, and Charles Sumner, Dickens, McDonald, Thackeray, and Kingsley, besides many others. In after years he built a summer home at Manches- ter-by-the-sea.
Writing and publishing from his youth, — though always perhaps with a too modest estimate of his own abilitv, and with a singular reticence consideiing his own admirable and delightful style, and the wealth of ma- terial which his study, his travels, his observations, and his friendship had united in furnishing him, — Mr. Fields was also winning distinction as an au- thor, both here and beyond seas. We have many books edited wholly or in part by him, and several volumes, though far too f ew,of his own writings.
��It is not unlikely that other collections might be made of the more fragmen- tary writings he published in maga- zines and newspapers, which would be sure of interested readers.
Kctii'ing from the publishing house in 1870, Mr. Fields gave the best of his last years to the preparation and delivery of lectures, most of them on subjects related to English literature. He was in great demand as a lecturer, East a'nd West, and the work he did in this way must have given him peculiar satisfaction, for it was one of peculiar importance and benefi- cence.
Doubtless it was the personality of the speaker, so potent, so notable, so gracious and kindly, so winning and inspiring, that constituted the chief element in their influence upon all classes. For both the learned and the unlearned, young students and illiterate farmers, in cultured cities, popular academies, and raw villages, owned the persuasive charm of his presence and speech, and acknowl- edged their debt to him. As neces- sary to the race as its Shakespeares and Emersons, its Miltons and Spen- sers, its Dantes and Words worths, are the men, as great in heart and soul as they, it may be, who bring the truths these teach to the apprehension of the people who would otherwise fail of recognizing their heritage of thought. In the realm of intellect there can hardlv be a higher work than of such a teacher. It is a work which Mr. Fields well began, for the reading public, in his "Yesterdays with Au- thors," and certain papers in his "Underbrush." " Began," I say, for certainly these volumes, beside what he might have done had other years
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