That a young man, not thirty-three when he died, should have written these volumes, so full of life, so full of strange adventure, of wide reading, telling of such large and thorough knowledge of books and men and Nature, is a remarkable fact in itself.  That he should have let the manuscripts lie in his desk has probably surprised the world more.  But, much as he wrote, Winthrop, perhaps, always felt that his true life was not that of the author, but of the actor.  He has often told me that it was a pleasure to write,—­probably such a pleasure as it is to an old tar to spin his yarns.  His mind was active, stored with the accumulated facts of a varied experience.  How keen an observer of Nature he was, those who have read “John Brent” or the “Canoe and Saddle” need not be told; how appreciative an observer of every-day life, was shown in that brilliant story which appeared in these pages some eighteen months ago, under the title of “Love and Skates.”  Our American life lost by his death one who, had he lived, would have represented it, reported it to the world, soul and body together; for he comprehended its spirit, as well as saw its outer husk; he was in sympathy with all its manifestations.

That quick, intelligent eye saw everything; that kindly, sympathetic spirit comprehended always the soul of things; and no life, however common, rugged, or coarse, was to him empty.  If he added always something of his own nobility of heart, if he did not pry out with prurient eyes the meannesses of life around him, the picture he drew was none the less true,—­was, indeed, it seems to me, all the more true.  Therefore I say that his early death was a loss to American literature, or, to speak more accurately, to that too small part of our literature which concerns itself with American life.  To him the hard-featured Yankee had something besides hard features and ungainly manners; he saw the better part as well as the grosser of the creature, and knew that

    “Poor lone Hannah,
    Sitting by the window, binding shoes,”

had somewhat besides coarse hands and red eyes.  He was not tainted with the vicious habit of caricature, which is the excuse with which superficial and heartless writers impose their false art upon the public.  Nor did he need that his heroes should wear kid gloves,—­though he was himself the neatest-gloved man I knew.  “Armstrong of Oregon” was a rough figure enough; but how well he knew how to bring out the kindly traits in that rude lumberman’s character! how true to Nature is that sketch of a gentleman in homespun!  And even Jake Shamberlain, the Mormon mail-carrier, a rollicking, untidy rover, fond of whiskey, and doubtless not too scrupulous in a “trade,” has yet, in Winthrop’s story, qualities which draw us to him.

To sit down to “John Brent” after rending one of the popular novels of these days, by one of the class of writers who imagine photography the noblest of arts, is like getting out of a fashionable “party” into the crisp air of a clear, starlight, December night.  And yet Winthrop was a “society” man; one might almost say he knew that life better than the other, the freer, the nobler, which he loved to describe, as he loved to live it.