The truth is that it is biography rather than history which really allures me; history seems to me worse than useless unless it illus trates the times of which it writes as those times affected the lives of its men and women. A book like this has no justification, to my mind, save as it makes us understand just a little better the part New England, in the per son of its chief town, has played in the mighty drama of nations made up of thinking, feeling men and women.