Page:Hubert Howe Bancroft His Work and His Method.djvu/4

161 it only made me angry that I could not help her. Behold the quintessence of folly! to mourn for that which is inevitable to all, to be incensed at inexorable fate, to remain for years sullen over the mysterious ways of the unknowable." (158)

The building was completed in April, 1870, and the Bancroft business rapidly became one of the most extensive of its kind. But years of trial followed hard upon growing prosperity. The effects of the opening of the Pacific Railway, of a series of dry winters and hard years for California, brought on all but a general collapse. "In time, however, with smoothness and regularity, my work assumed shape, part of it was finished and praised ; letters of encouragement came pouring in like healthful breezes to the heated brow; I acquired a name, and all men smiled upon me. Then I built Babylonian towers, and climbing heavenward peered into paradise." (167)

In the meantime the Bancroft Library had risen to worthy proportions and the bookseller had launched upon a literary enterprise quite unparalleled in the history of letters. Mr. Bancroft has told us with much particularity the story of the growth of his unique library in his Literary Industries; (173) - but to speak of that at this point would be a digression.

Nevertheless the latter half of Bancroft's life is so completely absorbed in his literary labors that little remains to be said of his biography apart from them. He began publishing in 1875, declining, the same year the Republican nomination for Congress. Said he: "There were ten thousand ready to serve their country where there was not one to do my work in case I should abandon it." (577) On October 12, 1876, he was married to Matilda Coley Griffing, who was thenceforth the companion not only of his bosom, but of his literary activities as well. After the second marriage he philosophizes in this strain: "It has been elsewhere intimated that no one is competent to write a book who has not already written several books. The same observation might be not inappropriately applied to marriage. No man - I will not say woman - is really in the fittest condition to marry who has not been married before. For obvious reasons, a middle-aged man ought to make a better husband than a very young man." (458)

The historical work of H. H. Bancroft required the best part of the energies of thirty years. After adding to the series of thirty-nine volumes "The Chronicles of the Builders," this indefatigable worker entered upon another literary enterprise, of little pretension to history, but more to art, "The Book of the Fair." This has been followed by still other volumes of later date. In his prime, Mr. Bancroft, in person, was tall, stalwart, and