  THIS is neither a handbook nor a guide to the haunts of our Lake Celebrities. Yet it may, perhaps, serve in some sort the purposes of both. It is not the result of any fresh or original research. I claim only to have condensed many biographies, and to have provided an index to the literary status of the men and women of whom I treat, some of whose works are scarce, and some too voluminous for ordinary readers. These essays were written during leisure hours towards the close of a busy life. They were published first in two different newspapers. This will account for their form, and for the absence of either alphabetical or chronological sequence. The earlier ones were written for friends in my old home in the South; the later ones for my new friends in the North. In bringing them together into book form I have remembered the increasing number of tourists who require food for the mind as well as for the body, and I have remembered my own want, in years past, of some concise account of those whose names were perpetually before me while moving from place to place in these attractive regions. To such tourists especially I respectfully dedicate my biographic sketches, though not without a hope that they may reach, and be of use to, a still wider circle of readers. FREDERICK SESSIONS. The Brant, |
|
