Few hopeless romanticists escape it.

Dramatically speaking, he is one of the most striking figures in American history, and I imagine that I have not been the first dreamer of dreams and writer of books who has haunted the scenes of his flesh-and-blood activity in the secret, half-shamefaced hope of one day happening upon his ghost! From the day of his graduation from college at sixteen, he somehow contrived to win the attention of everyone whom he came near.

He still wins it.

We love to read of his frantic rush to the colours, guardian or no guardian; of the steel in him which lifted him from a bed of fever to join the Canadian expedition; of his daring exploits of espionage disguised as a French Catholic priest; of a hundred and one similar incidents in a life history which, as we read it, is far too strange not to be true.
Spectacular he was from his birth, and even today his name upon a page is enough to set up a whole theatre in our imaginations.

Just one incident comes to me at this moment.