This 1905 publication is an informative biography of American philosopher and historian John Fiske. Perry, who was a contemporary of Fiske's at Harvard, gives an insider's view of life at the institution during the Civil War. Perry opens his narrative, "The life of a man of letters is like a voyage: that is the most successful in which the least happens." The author asserts that the life of John Fiske has its own place within history, and is a story from which lessons can be learned.