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 assacre.

destined to confront an equally persistent and indefatigable effort to put before the authors of text-books the real facts in the case. "The Chicago Mephistopheles in this matter," as Dr. Nixon has feelingly characterized him, is Mr. Wil- liam I. Marshall, of the Gladstone school. Having convinced himself after what is probably the most painstaking exami- nation of the question that has ever been made, that the Whitman story was a fabrication, Mr. Marshall prepared to write a book on the subject. Before it was ready for publi- cation, however, his attention was arrested by the remarkable efflorescence of the legend in the newest and most attractive school text-books. Realizing as a practical teacher the tre- mendous significance of this phase of the development of the legend, and aware of the relative ineffectiveness of public controversy against such an array of writers and champions as would now rush into the fray, he began about three years ago a silent campaign by submitting portions of his manu- script and transcripts of his material to the authors of the existing text-books. In this way he convinced many that they had been taken in, and put others on their guard against a like misfortune. ^

1 Mr. Marshall writes that he first learned of the Whitman story through Dr. Mowry in 1877. In 1884, having become convinced that Whitman did not save Oregon, he criticised the story in a lecture in Baltimore (Nov. 13), and in 1885 in a lecture in Fitchburg (June 2) showed the story to be unfounded. An account of Mr. Marshall's labors was given by him at the meeting of the American His- torical Association at Detroit, Dec. 28, 1900, and will be found in the Annual Report for 1900. The results so far were indicated in an article in the School Weekly of Chicago, Eeb. 22, 1901, by which it appears that the following authors of school books acknowledge that they are convinced by the evidence presented by Mr. Marshall and announce their intentions either to omit or revise their ac- counts of Whitman : H. E. Scudder, D. H. Montgomery, J. B. McMaster, W. F. Gordy, A. F. Blaisdell, and Mrs. A. H. Burton. Edward Eggleston wrote that he did not " need to be warned against such a fake as the Whitman fable, which I am every now and then entreated to insert." John Fiske vrrote : " You have entirely demolished the Whitman delusion, and by so doing have made yourself a public benefactor. I am sorry to say that I was taken in by Barrows and Gray, and supposed what they said about Whitman to be true." The story is not to be found in any of Mr. Fiske's printed books, but he incorporated it in his centennial oration at Astoria in 1892. That he had been appealed to as early as February, 1895, to put it into his text-book would appear from his letter to President Pen-