This book is for busy people who have not the time to read at largeupon the subject. Those who would adequately master all the bearingsof the story here briefly told must read American history, for whichfacilities are rapidly increasing. As to John Brown himself, hisfriend F. B. Sanborn's LIFE AND LETTERS is a mine of wealth. To itspages the present writer is greatly indebted, and he commends them toothers.
W. H.
Kilburn, May 1913.
There are few who have not a dim notion of John Brown as a name boundup with the stirring events of the United States in the period whichpreceded the Civil War and the emancipation of the slave. Many Englishreaders, however, do not get beyond the limits of the famous couplet,
John Brown's body lies mouldering in the grave,
But his soul is marching on.
That statement is authentic in both its clauses, but it is interestingto learn what he did with the body before it commenced a dissolutionwhich seems to have been regarded as worth recording. Carlyle says inhis grimly humorous way of the gruesome elevation of the head of one ofhis patriotic heroes on Temple Bar, 'It didn't matter: he had quitedone with it.' And we might say the same of the body which was hangedat Charlestown in 1859. In his devoutly fatalistic way J