The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 68, July 1964 - April, 1965 Page: 142
574 p. : ill., maps, ports. ; 23 cm.View a full description of this periodical.
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Southwestern Historical Quarterly
hotel. Now the personal and anecdotal approach to historiography
appeals especially to the senior historian, at least when he is at
the delivery end-in fact in lecturing of all sorts I find great
comfort in our Lord's statement that it is more blessed to give
than receive-and I have always wanted a chance at that sort of
speech. But it has long been obvious to my colleagues, my stu-
dents, and myself that I would never give the presidential ad-
dress to the American Historical Association, and so with your
tolerance I should like tonight to read the paper I might have
read, under other circumstances, to the larger but less selective
audience.
I have called my paper "With Henty in 'Texas: A Tale of a Boy's
Historian." In it I hope to present a sort of apologia for my
entrance into our common craft and an analysis of the works of
the historian who first turned my interest to the remote past.
Annually in looking through the several hundred applications
for fellowships we receive in my department I am surprised to see
how early most of the applicants had decided on history as a life
career. My surprise is tempered with admiration for their fore-
sightedness. Graduate schools are now recruiting young scholars
with all the vigor and some of the inducements employed by
undergraduate schools in recruiting linebackers and field goal
specialists, with or without shoes, and in either case a long period
of previous training is almost prerequisite for a remunerative
appointment. In my generation in college I cannot recall any
such early interest in historical studies. We were in those years
familiar with the youthful call to the Protestant ministry and
with the almost hereditary succession in medicine and law which
early marked the manchild for the father's profession and pro-
duced firm names like Finnegan, Finnegan, Goldman, Napoli,
and Finnegan. But as freshmen we would have been shocked to
learn that one of us by his own volition had decided to become
an historian, and most of us were too naive to realize that one
must have a Ph.D. to qualify for that vocation. Herodotus and
Gibbon were naive that way too.
In my own case I stumbled into Clio's back door through a
series of accidents rather than by planned economy. It was a
feckless approach to our profession and an unenviable one, but142
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 68, July 1964 - April, 1965, periodical, 1965; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101198/m1/182/?rotate=270: accessed April 24, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting Texas State Historical Association.