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nydus/Introduction to the study of historyPublic
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Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF HISTORY

  1. [36] In the passage quoted above.
  2. [37] Mr. H. H. Bancroft, in his Memoirs, entitled "Literary Industries" (New York, 1891, 16mo), analyses with sufficient minuteness some practical consequences of the imperfection of the methods of research. He considers the case of an industrious writer proposing to write the history of California. He easily procures a few books, reads them, takes notes; these books refer him to others, which he consults in the public libraries of the city where he resides. Several years are passed in this manner, at the end of which he perceives that he has not a tenth part of the resources in his hands; he travels, maintains correspondences, but, finally despairing of exhausting the subject, he comforts his conscience and pride with the reflection that he has done much, and that many of the works he has not seen, like many of those he has, are probably of very slight historic value. As to newspapers and the myriads of United States government reports, all of them containing facts bearing on Californian history; being a sane man, he has never dreamed of searching them from beginning to end: he has turned over a few of them, that is all; he knows that each of these fields of research would afford a labour of several years, and that all of them would fill the better part of his life with drudgery. As for oral testimony and manuscripts, he will gather a few unpublished anecdotes in chance conversations; he will obtain access to a few family papers; all this will appear in his book as notes and authorities. Now and again he will get hold of a few documentary curiosities among the state archives, but as it would take fifteen years to master the whole collection, he will naturally be content to glean a little here and there. Then he begins to write. He does not feel called upon to inform the public that he has not seen all the documents; on the contrary, he makes the most of what he has been able to procure in the course of twenty-five years of industrious research.
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