" Genuine history is brought into existence only when the
historian begins to unravel, across the lapse of time, the living
man, toiling, impassioned, entrenched in his customs, with his
voice and features, his gestures and dress, distinct and complete
as he from whom we have just parted in the street." A history
of a people which has passed away is the effort to make the past
the present; to revivify the dead and present every phase of
actual life as it once existed, with all its bad and good, its bless-
ings and its sufferings; the home life, the public highway, the
street, the field, men and women privately, collectively, at work
and at play, socially and morally, as they once were here in the
struggle for life.1 |