Recollections of a Lifetime. By General R. Brinkerhoff. (Robert Clarke
and Co., Cincinnati.)—General Brinkerhoff's narrative illustrates in a very interesting way the versatility of the American citizen. He began life as a schoolmaster, taking charge of a country school at the age of sixteen. He had by this time become a zealous politician on the Democratic side. Two years after he began to study law. Family difficulties intervened, and he went South, where he was set up in a private school,— being still well under twenty. He speaks in the most handsome terms of Southern kindness and hospitality, though he had afterwards to take an active part on the Northern side in the great Civil War. A second teaching engagement was in the Jackson family, with the adopted son of Andrew Jackson. Our author never saw the President, but he has some pleasant things to say about him. After this came a return to the law, and to politics. This was interrupted for a spell of news- paper editing, then the law again, and then soldiering, for the Secession troubles had begun. Mr. Brinkerhoff was a quartermaster, and found the occupations of that post very troublesome, and he expresses his thankfulness that he was able to get through them without losing his life or becoming bankrupt. After the end of the war—he was present in the theatre when Lincoln was assassinated—he received promotion, and was ultimately put in charge of the army dep8t at Cincin- nati. He found this tedious. " The only variety to the dull monotony of this period was the efforts of thieves and politicians to get some one in my place who would run the department in their interest." "Thieves and politicians" is good. We see on p. 183 as to the preparations made by the South, that " full arrangements had been made with France and England for the recognition of the Confederacy as soon as the seizure of Washington should indicate a de facto power of sufficient strength for such a recognition." We can believe it of France ; but doubt as to England. This is a very readable volume.
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