reveal. His collaborator Nemos says that he attended a boarding school, and then continued his studies in Germany, at Heidelberg, according to his own account. He claimed to have come to America with $5,000 in pocket money, and found his way first to Montana. On his arrival at San Francisco he entered the library. Leaving in 1874 to assume editorship of the Overland Monthly with Fisher, he was soon back in Bancroft's employ. Naturally he was the most able of the library corps. But while he was brilliant, handsome, and witty, he was at the same time erratic and unreliable. He died in 1884.)
Mr. Fisher's part was mythology, while the division of the work relating to language was given to Albert Goldschmidt, a German, who had been employed in the library since the end of 1871. (According to Nemos, Goldschmidt was said to have been the son of a Jewish clothing dealer at Hamburg. In early life he ran off to sea, and claimed to have become master of a vessel. He had acquired much general knowledge, and was musically inclined, often singing in church choirs. Before coming to the library Nemos says that he led a "vagarious life" in Nevada. As a linguist he had great ability, and was able to translate almost any language which he encountered, but was inclined to fritter away his time. Nemos declared him "the most systematic idler in the library." This failing brought about his discharge. Later he became a mining superintendent in Chihuahua.) Mr. Oak took the subject of Antiquities and Aboriginal History (preface to Native Races I, p. 13).
The undertaking was an enormous one, because of the vast quantities of material to be handled, as well as the inexperience of the workers, which made it necessary for them to devise their own system as they proceeded. It is said that by an actual calculation the sum total of all the labor expended upon each of the five volumes of the
