of
its wide arc of experience and its violent dramatic contrasts. It lent
itself to epic treatment. With a feeling that if I could put this deeply
significant and distinctively American story into a readable volume, I
should be adding something to American literature as well as to my own
life, I consented. Dropping my fictional plans for the time I became the
historian.

In order to make the biography a study from first-hand material I
planned a series of inspirational trips which filled in a large part of
'96. Beginning at Georgetown, Ohio, where I found several of Grant's
boyhood playmates, I visited Ripley, where he went to school, and then
at the Academy at West Point I spent several days examining the records.
In addition, I went to each of the barracks at which young Grant had
been stationed. Sacketts Harbor, Detroit and St. Louis yielded their
traditions. A month in Mexico enabled me to trace out on foot not only
the battle grounds of Monterey, but that of Vera Cruz, Puebla and Molina
del Rey. No spot on which Grant had lived long enough to leave a
definite impression was neglected. In this work I had the support of
William Dean Howells who insisted on my doing the book bravely.

In pursuit of material concerning Grant's later life I interviewed
scores of his old neighbors in Springfield and Galena, and in pursuit of
his classmates, men like Buckner and Longstreet and Wright and Franklin,
I took long journeys. In short I spared no pains to give my material a
first-hand quality, and in doing this I traveled nearly thirty thousand
miles, making many interesting acquaintances, in more than half the
states of the Union.

During all these activities, however, the old Wisconsin farmhouse
remained my pivot. In my intervals of rest I returned to my study and
made notes of the vividly contrasting scenes through which I had passed.
Orizaba and Jalapa, Perote with its snowy mountains rising above hot,
cactus-covered plains, and Mexico City became almost dream-like by
contrast with the placid beauty of Neshonoc. Some of my experiences,
like "the Passion Play at Coyocan," for example, took on a medieval
quality, so incredibly remote was its scene,--and yet, despite all this
travel, notwithstanding my study of cities and soldiers and battle maps,
I could not forget to lay out my garden. I kept my mother supplied with
all the necessaries and a few of the luxuries of life.

In my note book of that time I find these lines: "I