THE FRENCH IN THE HEART OF AMERICA

BY
JOHN FINLEY




PREFACE


Most of what is here written was spoken many months ago in the
Amphitheatre Richelieu of the Sorbonne, in Paris, and some of it in Lille,
Nancy, Dijon, Lyons, Grenoble, Montpellier, Toulouse, Bordeaux, Poitiers,
Rennes, and Caen; and all of it was in the American publisher's hands
before the great war came, effacing, with its nearer adventures, perils,
sufferings, and anxieties, the dim memories of the days when the French
pioneers were out in the Mississippi Valley, "The Heart of America."

As it was spoken, the purpose was to freshen and brighten for the French
the memory of what some of them had seemingly wished to forget and to
visualize to them the vigorous, hopeful, achieving life that is passing
before that background of Gallic venturing and praying. It was planned
also to publish the book simultaneously in France; and, less than a week
before the then undreamed-of war, the manuscript was carried for that
purpose to Paris and left for translation in the hands of Madame Boutroux,
the wife of the beloved and eminent Emile Boutroux, head of the Fondation
Thiers, and sister of the illustrious Henri Poincare. But wounded soldiers
soon came to fill the chambers of the scholars there, and the wife and
mother has had to give all her thought to those who have hazarded their