Formal of phrase and pursuing a leisurely, retrospective course, these memoirs cover Dr. Barringer's ante-and-post bellum North Carolina childhood, the later years of study. In some detail, of time and place and family, the younger years on a North Carolina plantation are covered; the war- in which his father fought in more than seventy engagements and from which he returned after a period of imprisonment; visits here and there and a trip north; his schooling, away from home, and finally the University of Virginia and the study of medicine; clinical training in New York, further training abroad, and here the recollections end... A pretty personal account, of questionable general appeal.