Chapter XV: The Tablet and Memorial Address

On May 30th, Decoration Day of 1894, Edward's family and many of his friends were invited by the citizens of Cornwall-on-the-Hudson to be present at the dedication of a Memorial Park to be known as Roe Park, a wild spot in the rear of his home where he had been accustomed to go for recreation when his day's task was done.

Here a bronze tablet was placed upon one of the huge bowlders upon which he and his friends had often sat and rested after their long rambles.

Two of his friends, who then came from a distance to honor his memory, have since joined him in the higher mansions--Rev. Dr. Teal, of Elizabeth, New Jersey, who began his ministry at Cornwall, and was for twenty years my brother's intimate friend; and Mr. Hamilton Gibson. Both of these men were stricken down suddenly, as was my brother.

I cannot close these reminiscences better than by quoting from Dr. Lyman Abbott's eloquent Memorial Address, given that day upon my brother's work as a writer.

"It is of the latter aspect of his life I wish to speak for a few
moments only, in an endeavor to interpret his service to the great
American people by his pen through literature. The chief function
of the imagination is to enable us to realize actual scenes with
which we are not familiar. This is an important service. It is well
that you who live in these quiet and peaceful scenes should know
what is the wretchedness of some of your fellow beings in the slums
of New York. It is well that your sympathies should be broadened
and deepened, and that you should know the sorrow, the struggle
that goes on in those less favored homes. But this is not the only
function of the imagination, nor its highest nor most important
function. It gives us enjoyment by taking us on its wings and
flying with us away from lives which otherwise would be prosaic,
dull, commonplace, lives of dull routine and drudgery. But this
also is not the only nor the highest use; God has given us
imagination in order that we may have noble ideals set before us,
and yet ideals so linked to actual life that they shall become
inseparable. He has given us imagination that we may see what we
may hope for, what we may endeavor to achieve--that we may be
imbued with a nobler inspiration, a higher hope, and a more loving,
enduring patience and perseverance. Realism, which uses imagination
only to depict the actual, is not the highest form of fiction.
Romanticism, which uses the imagination only to depict what is for
us the unreal and impossible, is not the highest form of fiction.
That fiction is the highest which by the imagination makes real to
our thought the common affairs of life, and yet so blends them with
noble ideals that we are able to go back into life with a larger, a
nobler, and a more perfect faith.

"Now Mr. Roe's fiction has been very severely criticised, but it
has been universally read. For myself I would rather minister to
the higher life of ten thousand people than win the plaudits of one
self-appointed critic. And his novels have been universally read
because they have uniformly ministered to the higher life of the
readers. He has ministered to the life not of ten thousand, or of
one hundred thousand, but of thousands of thousands, for his
readers in this country alone are numbered by the millions. And I
venture to say that no man, woman, or child ever read through one
of Mr. Roe's books and arose without being bettered by the reading,
without having a clearer faith, a brighter hope, and a deeper and
richer love for his fellow man. In one sense he was a realist. He
made careful and painstaking study of all the events which he
attempted to describe.... He was not a mere photographer. He saw
the grandeur that there is in life. He felt the heart that beats in
a woman's bosom and the heart that beats in a soldier's breast. He
felt it because his own heart had known the purity of womanhood and
the courage of manhood. He portrayed something of that purity,
something of that courage, something of that divine manhood,
because he possessed the qualities that made him a hero on the
battlefield, and so made him a preacher of heroism in human life.
This is the man we have come here to honor to-day; the man who by
his imagination linked the real and the ideal together; the man who
has enabled thousands of men and women of more prosaic nature than
himself to see the beauty and the truth--in one word, the
divinity--that there is in human life.

"It is fitting that you should have chosen a rural scene like this
as a monument to his name; for he may be described by the title of
one of his books, as the one who lived near to nature's heart. He
loved these rocks, these hills. It is fitting that you should have
left these woods as nature made them. He cared more for the wild
bird of the grove than for the caged bird of the parlor, more for
the wild flowers than for those of the greenhouse, more for nature
wild and rugged than for nature clean and shaven and dressed in the
latest fashion of the landscape gardener.

"It is gratifying to see so many of all ages, of all sects, of all
classes in this community gather to do honor to the memory of Mr.
Roe. But we, many as we are, are not all who are truly here. We
stand as the representatives of the many thousands in this country
whose hours he has beguiled, whose labors he has lightened, whose
lives he has inspired, and in his name and in theirs we dedicate to
the memory of Mr. Roe these rocks and trees and this rugged park
and this memorial tablet now unveiled. Time with its busy hand will
by and by obscure the writing; time will by and by fell these trees
and gnaw away these rocks. Time may even obliterate the name of E.
P. Roe from the memory of men; but not eternity itself shall
obliterate from the kingdom of God the inspiration to the higher,
nobler and diviner life which he--preacher, writer, soldier, pastor
and citizen--has left in human life."

End of Project Gutenberg's E.P. Roe: Reminiscences of his Life, by Mary A. Roe

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