Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume Three).djvu/564

 Laws, and delivered the address which is the customary accompaniment of such academic distinction.

Before this time, however, his fondness for platform work had greatly declined, doubtless because he became even more painstaking in preparation as he grew older, while his physical strength naturally lessened. In November, 1903, Charles Francis Adams, as president of the Massachusetts Historical Society, urged him to make the address on Mommsen, recently deceased, before the society, which had enrolled Mr. Schurz and the great German historian among its chosen few honorary members. Mr. Schurz's informal answer to Mr. Adams showed that he was anxious to escape so serious and laborious a task, and he protested with something of jest, but at least half in earnest: “If there is anything I detest it is making speeches. It is the bane of my life.” Nevertheless he made an informal talk before the society; for he appreciated the honor it had conferred on him, and he could not resist the opportunity to express his admiration of Mommsen before a learned and dignified body most of whose members were his own personal friends.

What enabled him to decline nearly all invitations to speak in public was his eager interest in his purely literary work; for at last he had settled down to methodical labor on his memoirs. In a letter of August 23, 1901, he said: “I have been writing down this summer some reminiscences of my life, and begin to like the work.” Regretting that he had not kept a diary, so as to avoid “things we only think we remember,” he related a conversation with Sybel, the German historian. After one of his visits to Bismarck, Schurz was asked by Sybel what the great Chancellor had told him about the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian war in 1870. When Schurz repeated what Bismarck had said, Sybel remarked with a smile: “Well, well!