Chapter I: THINK that all days are substantially alike in the long run. It is no (3)

Only a few years ago, the heretic was regarded as an enemy of the human race. The man who denied the inspiration of the Jewish Scriptures was looked upon as a moral leper, and the Atheist as the worst of criminals. Even in that day, Elizur Wright was grand enough to speak his honest thought, to deny the inspiration of the Bible; brave enough to defy the God of the orthodox church--the Jehovah of the Old Testament, the Eternal Jailer, the Everlasting Inquisitor.

He contended that a good God would not have upheld slavery and polygamy; that a loving Father would not assist some of his children to enslave or exterminate their brethren; that an infinite being would not be unjust, irritable, jealous, revengeful, ignorant, and cruel.

And it was his great good fortune to live long enough to find the intellectual world on his side; long enough to know that the greatest' naturalists, philosophers, and scientists agreed with him; long enough to see certain words change places, so that "heretic" was honorable and "orthodox" an epithet. To-day, the heretic is known to be a man of principle and courage--one blest with enough mental independence to tell his thought. To-day, the thoroughly orthodox means the thoroughly stupid.

Only a few years ago it was taken for granted that an "unbeliever" could not be a moral man; that one who disputed the inspiration of the legends of Judea could not be sympathetic and humane, and could not really love his fellow-men. Had we no other evidence upon this subject, the noble life of Elizur Wright would demonstrate the utter baselessness of these views.

His life was spent in doing good--in attacking the hurtful, in defending what he believed to be the truth. Generous beyond his means; helping others to help themselves; always hopeful, busy, just, cheerful; filled with the spirit of reform; a model citizen--always thinking of the public good, devising ways and means to save something for posterity, feeling that what he had he held in trust; loving Nature, familiar with the poetic side of things, touched to enthusiasm by the beautiful thought, the brave word, and the generous deed; friendly in manner, candid and kind in speech, modest but persistent; enjoying leisure as only the industrious can; loving and gentle in his family; hospitable,--judging men and women regardless of wealth, position or public clamor; physically fearless, intellectually honest, thoroughly informed; unselfish, sincere, and reliable as the attraction of gravitation. Such was Elizur Wright,--one of the staunchest soldiers that ever faced and braved for freedom's sake the wrath and scorn and lies of place and power.

A few days ago I met this genuine man. His interest in all human things was just as deep and keen, his hatred of oppression, his love of freedom, just as intense, just as fervid, as on the day I met him first. True, his body was old, but his mind was young, and his heart, like a spring in the desert, bubbled over as joyously as though it had the secret of eternal youth. But it has ceased to beat, and the mysterious veil that hangs where sight and blindness are the same--the veil that revelation has not drawn aside--that science cannot lift, has fallen once again between the living and the dead.

And yet we hope and dream. May be the longing for another life is but the prophecy forever warm from Nature's lips, that love, disguised as death, alone fulfills. We cannot tell. And yet perhaps this Hope is but an antic, following the fortunes of an uncrowned king, beguiling grief with jest and satisfying loss with pictured gain. We do not know.

But from the Christian's cruel hell, and from his heaven more heartless still, the free and noble soul, if forced to choose, should loathing turn, and cling with rapture to the thought of endless sleep.

But this we know: good deeds are never childless. A noble life is never lost. A virtuous action does not die. Elizur Wright scattered with generous hand the priceless seeds, and we shall reap the golden grain. His words and acts are ours, and all he nobly did is living still.

Farewell, brave soul! Upon thy grave I lay this tribute of respect and love. When last our hands were joined, I said these parting words: "Long life!" And I repeat them now.

A TRIBUTE TO MRS. IDA WHITING KNOWLES.

New York, Dec, 16, 1887.

MY FRIENDS: Again we stand in the shadow of the great mystery--a shadow as deep and dark as when the tears of the first mother fell upon the pallid face of her lifeless babe--a mystery that has never yet been solved.

We have met in the presence of the sacred dead, to speak a word of praise, of hope, of consolation.

Another life of love is now a blessed memory--a lingering strain of music.

The loving daughter, the pure and consecrated wife, the sincere friend, who with tender faithfulness discharged the duties of a life, has reached her journey's end.

A braver, a more serene, a more chivalric spirit--clasping the loved and by them clasped--never passed from life to enrich the realm of death. No field of war ever witnessed greater fortitude, more perfect, smiling courage, than this poor, weak and helpless woman displayed upon the bed of pain and death.

Her life was gentle and her death sublime. She loved the good and all the good loved her.

There is this consolation: she can never suffer more; never feel again the chill of death; never part again from those she loves. Her heart can break no more. She has shed her last tear, and upon her stainless brow has been set the wondrous seal of everlasting peace.

When the Angel of Death--the masked and voiceless--enters the door of home, there come with her all the daughters of Compassion, and of these Love and Hope remain forever.

You are about to take this dear dust home--to the home of her girlhood, and to the place that was once my home. You will lay her with neighbors whom I have loved, and who are now at rest. You will lay her where my father sleeps.

"Lay her i' the earth,
And from her fair and unpolluted flesh
May violets spring."

I never knew, I never met, a braver spirit than the one that once inhabited this silent form of dreamless clay.

A TRIBUTE TO HENRY WARD BEECHER.

New York, June 26,1887.

HENRY WARD BEECHER was born in a Puritan penitentiary, of which his father was one of the wardens--a prison with very narrow and closely-grated windows. Under its walls were the rayless, hopeless and measureless dungeons of the damned, and on its roof fell the shadow of God's eternal frown. In this prison the creed and catechism were primers for children, and from a pure sense of duty their loving hearts were stained and scarred with the religion of John Calvin.

In those days the home of an orthodox minister was an inquisition in which babes were tortured for the good of their souls. Children then, as now, rebelled against the infamous absurdities and cruelties of the creed. No Calvinist was ever able, unless with blows, to answer the questions of his child. Children were raised in what was called "the nurture and admonition of the Lord"--that is to say, their wills were broken or subdued, their natures were deformed and dwarfed, their desires defeated or destroyed, and their development arrested or perverted. Life was robbed of its Spring, its Summer and its Autumn. Children stepped from the cradle into the snow. No laughter, no sunshine, no joyous, free, unburdened days. God, an infinite detective, watched them from above, and Satan, with malicious leer, was waiting for their souls below. Between these monsters life was passed. Infinite consequences were predicated of the smallest action, and a burden greater than a God could bear was placed upon the heart and brain of every child. To think, to ask questions, to doubt, to investigate, were acts of rebellion. To express pity for the lost, writhing in the dungeons below, was simply to give evidence that the enemy of souls had been at work within their hearts.

Among all the religions of this world--from the creed of cannibals who devoured flesh, to that of Calvinists who polluted souls--there is none, there has been none, there will be none, more utterly heartless and inhuman than was the orthodox Congregationalism of New England in the year of grace 1813. It despised every natural joy, hated pictures, abhorred statues as lewd and lustful things, execrated music, regarded nature as fallen and corrupt, man as totally depraved and woman as somewhat worse. The theatre was the vestibule of perdition, actors the servants of Satan, and Shakespeare a trifling wretch whose words were seeds of death. And yet the virtues found a welcome, cordial and sincere; duty was done as understood; obligations were discharged; truth was told; self-denial was practiced for the sake of others, and many hearts were good and true in spite of book and creed.

In this atmosphere of theological miasma, in this hideous dream of superstition, in this penitentiary, moral and austere, this babe first saw the imprisoned gloom. The natural desires ungratified, the laughter suppressed, the logic brow-beaten by authority, the humor frozen by fear--of many generations--were in this child, a child destined to rend and wreck the prison's walls.

Through the grated windows of his cell, this child, this boy, this man, caught glimpses of the outer world, of fields and skies. New thoughts were in his brain, new hopes within his heart. Another heaven bent above his life. There came a revelation of the beautiful and real.

Theology grew mean and small. Nature wooed and won and saved this mighty soul.

Her countless hands were sowing seeds within his tropic brain. All sights and sounds--all colors, forms and fragments--were stored within the treasury of his mind. His thoughts were moulded by the graceful curves of streams, by winding paths in woods, the charm of quiet country roads, and lanes grown indistinct with weeds and grass--by vines that cling and hide with leaf and flower the crumbling wall's decay--by cattle standing in the summer pools like statues of content.

There was within his words the subtle spirit of the season's change--of everything that is, of everything that lies between the slumbering seeds that, half awakened by the April rain, have dreams of heaven's blue, and feel the amorous kisses of the sun, and that strange tomb wherein the alchemist doth give to death's cold dust the throb and thrill of life again. He saw with loving eyes the willows of the meadow-streams grow red beneath the glance of Spring--the grass along the marsh's edge--the stir of life beneath the withered leaves--the moss below the drip of snow--the flowers that give their bosoms to the first south wind that wooes--the sad and timid violets that only bear the gaze of love from eyes half closed--the ferns, where fancy gives a thousand forms with but a single plan--the green and sunny slopes enriched with daisy's silver and the cowslip's gold.

As in the leafless woods some tree, aflame with life, stands like a rapt poet in the heedless crowd, so stood this man among his fellow-men.

All there is of leaf and bud, of flower and fruit, of painted insect life, and all the winged and happy children of the air that Summer holds beneath her dome of blue, were known and loved by him. He loved the yellow Autumn fields, the golden stacks, the happy homes of men, the orchard's bending boughs, the sumach's flags of flame, the maples with transfigured leaves, the tender yellow of the beech, the wondrous harmonies of brown and gold--the vines where hang the clustered spheres of wit and mirth. He loved the winter days, the whirl and drift of snow--all forms of frost--the rage and fury of the storm, when in the forest, desolate and stripped, the brave old pine towers green and grand--a prophecy of Spring. He heard the rhythmic sounds of Nature's busy strife, the hum of bees, the songs of birds, the eagle's cry, the murmur of the streams, the sighs and lamentations of the winds, and all the voices of the sea. He loved the shores, the vales, the crags and cliffs, the city's busy streets, the introspective, silent plain, the solemn splendors of the night, the silver sea of dawn, and evening's clouds of molten gold. The love of nature freed this loving man.

One by one the fetters fell; the gratings disappeared, the sunshine smote the roof, and on the floors of stone, light streamed from open doors. He realized the darkness and despair, the cruelty and hate, the starless blackness of the old, malignant creed. The flower of pity grew and blossomed in his heart. The selfish "consolation" filled his eyes with tears. He saw that what is called the Christian's hope is, that, among the countless billions wrecked and lost, a meagre few perhaps may reach the eternal shore--a hope that, like the desert rain, gives neither leaf nor bud--a hope that gives no joy, no peace, to any great and loving soul. It is the dust on which the serpent feeds that coils in heartless breasts.

Day by day the wrath and vengeance faded from the sky--the Jewish God grew vague and dint--the threats of torture and eternal pain grew vulgar and absurd, and all the miracles seemed strangely out of place. They clad the Infinite in motley garb, and gave to aureoled heads the cap and bells.

Touched by the pathos of all human life, knowing the shadows that fall on every heart--the thorns in every path, the sighs, the sorrows, and the tears that lie between a mother's arms and death's embrace--this great and gifted man denounced, denied, and damned with all his heart the fanged and frightful dogma that souls were made to feed the eternal hunger--ravenous as famine--of a God's revenge.

Take out this fearful, fiendish, heartless lie--compared with which all other lies are true--and the great arch of orthodox religion crumbling falls.

To the average man the Christian hell and heaven are only words. He has no scope of thought. He lives but in a dim, impoverished now. To him the past is dead--the future still unborn. He occupies with downcast eyes that narrow line of barren, shifting sand that lies between the flowing seas. But Genius knows all time. For him the dead all live and breathe, and act their countless parts again. All human life is in his now, and every moment feels the thrill of all to be.

No one can overestimate the good accomplished by this marvelous, many-sided man. He helped to slay the heart-devouring monster of the Christian world. He tried to civilize the church, to humanize the creeds, to soften pious breasts of stone, to take the fear from mothers' hearts, the chains of creed from every brain, to put the star of hope in every sky and over every grave. Attacked on every side, maligned by those who preached the law of love, he wavered not, but fought whole-hearted to the end.

Obstruction is but virtue's foil. From thwarted light leaps color's flame. The stream impeded has a song.

He passed from harsh and cruel creeds to that serene philosophy that has no place for pride or hate, that threatens no revenge, that looks on sin as stumblings of the blind and pities those who fall, knowing that in the souls of all there is a sacred yearning for the light. He ceased to think of man as something thrust upon the world--an exile from some other sphere. He felt at last that men are part of Nature's self--kindred of all life--the gradual growth of countless years; that all the sacred books were helps until outgrown, and all religions rough and devious paths that man has worn with weary feet in sad and painful search for truth and peace. To him these paths were wrong, and yet all gave the promise of success. He knew that all the streams, no matter how they wander, turn and curve amid the hills or rocks, or linger in the lakes and pools, must some time reach the sea. These views enlarged his soul and made him patient with the world, and while the wintry snows of age were falling on his head, Spring, with all her wealth of bloom, was in his heart.

The memory of this ample man is now a part of Nature's wealth. He battled for the rights of men. His heart was with the slave. He stood against the selfish greed of millions banded to protect the pirate's trade. His voice was for the right when freedom's friends were few. He taught the church to think and doubt. He did not fear to stand alone. His brain took counsel of his heart. To every foe he offered reconciliation's hand. He loved this land of ours, and added to its glory through the world. He was the greatest orator that stood within the pulpit's narrow curve. He loved the liberty of speech. There was no trace of bigot in his blood. He was a brave and generous man.

With reverent hands, I place this tribute on his tomb.

A TRIBUTE TO ROSCOE CONKLING.

Delivered before the New York State Legislature, at Albany,
N. Y, May 9,1888.

ROSCOE CONKLING--a great man, an orator, a statesman, a lawyer, a distinguished citizen of the Republic, in the zenith of his fame and power has reached his journey's end; and we are met, here in the city of his birth, to pay our tribute to his worth and work. He earned and held a proud position in the public thought. He stood for independence, for courage, and above all for absolute integrity, and his name was known and honored by many millions of his fellow-men.

The literature of many lands is rich with the tributes that gratitude, admiration and love have paid to the great and honored dead. These tributes disclose the character of nations, the ideals of the human race. In them we find the estimates of greatness--the deeds and lives that challenged praise and thrilled the hearts of men.

In the presence of death, the good man judges as he would be judged. He knows that men are only fragments--that the greatest walk in shadow, and that faults and failures mingle with the lives of all.

In the grave should be buried the prejudices and passions born of conflict. Charity should hold the scales in which are weighed the deeds of men. Peculiarities, traits born of locality and surroundings--these are but the dust of the race--these are accidents, drapery, clothes, fashions, that have nothing to do with the man except to hide his character. They are the clouds that cling to mountains. Time gives us clearer vision. That which was merely local fades away. The words of envy are forgotten, and all there is of sterling worth remains. He who was called a partisan is a patriot. The revolutionist and the outlaw are the founders of nations, and he who was regarded as a scheming, selfish politician becomes a statesman, a philosopher, whose words and deeds shed light.

Fortunate is that nation great enough to know the great.

When a great man dies--one who has nobly fought the battle of a life, who has been faithful to every trust, and has uttered his highest, noblest thought--one who has stood proudly by the right in spite of jeer and taunt, neither stopped by foe nor swerved by friend--in honoring him, in speaking words of praise and love above his dust, we pay a tribute to ourselves.

How poor this world would be without its graves, without the memories of its mighty dead. Only the voiceless speak forever.

Intelligence, integrity and courage are the great pillars that support the State.

Above all, the citizens of a free nation should honor the brave and independent man--the man of stainless integrity, of will and intellectual force. Such men are the Atlases on whose mighty shoulders rest the great fabric of the Republic. Flatterers, cringers, crawlers, time-servers are the dangerous citizens of a democracy. They who gain applause and power by pandering to the mistakes, the prejudices and passions of the multitude, are the enemies of liberty.

When the intelligent submit to the clamor of the many, anarchy begins and the Republic reaches the edge of chaos. Mediocrity, touched with ambition, flatters the base and calumniates the great, while the true patriot, who will do neither, is often sacrificed.

In a government of the people a leader should be a teacher--he should carry the torch of truth.

Most people are the slaves of habit--followers of custom--believers in the wisdom of the past--and were it not for brave and splendid souls, "the dust of antique time would lie unswept, and mountainous error be too highly heaped for truth to overpeer." Custom is a prison, locked and barred by those who long ago were dust, the keys of which are in the keeping of the dead.

Nothing is grander than when a strong, intrepid man breaks chains, levels walls and breasts the many-headed mob like some great cliff that meets and mocks the innumerable billows of the sea.

The politician hastens to agree with the majority--insists that their prejudice is patriotism, that their ignorance is wisdom;--not that he loves them, but because he loves himself. The statesman, the real reformer, points out the mistakes of the multitude, attacks the prejudices of his countrymen, laughs at their follies, denounces their cruelties, enlightens and enlarges their minds and educates the conscience--not because he loves himself, but because he loves and serves the right and wishes to make his country great and free.

With him defeat is but a spur to further effort. He who refuses to stoop, who cannot be bribed by the promise of success, or the fear of failure--who walks the highway of the right, and in disaster stands erect, is the only victor. Nothing is more despicable than to reach fame by crawling,--position by cringing.

When real history shall be written by the truthful and the wise, these men, these kneelers at the shrines of chance and fraud, these brazen idols worshiped once as gods, will be the very food of scorn, while those who bore the burden of defeat, who earned and kept their self-respect, who would not bow to man or men for place or power, will wear upon their brows the laurel mingled with the oak.

Roscoe Conkling was a man of superb courage.

He not only acted without fear, but he had that fortitude of soul that bears the consequences of the course pursued without complaint. He was charged with being proud. The charge was true--he was proud. His knees were as inflexible as the "unwedgeable and gnarled oak," but he was not vain. Vanity rests on the opinion of others--pride, on our own. The source of vanity is from without--of pride, from within. Vanity is a vane that turns, a willow that bends, with every breeze--pride is the oak that defies the storm. One is cloud--the other rock. One is weakness--the other strength.

This imperious man entered public life in the dawn of the reformation--at a time when the country needed men of pride, of principle and courage. The institution of slavery had poisoned all the springs of power. Before this crime ambition fell upon its knees,--politicians, judges, clergymen, and merchant-princes bowed low and humbly, with their hats in their hands. The real friend of man was denounced as the enemy of his country--the real enemy of the human race was called a statesman and a patriot. Slavery was the bond and pledge of peace, of union, and national greatness. The temple of American liberty was finished--the auction-block was the corner-stone.

It is hard to conceive of the utter demoralization, of the political blindness and immorality, of the patriotic dishonesty, of the cruelty and degradation of a people who supplemented the incomparable Declaration of Independence with the Fugitive Slave Law.

Think of the honored statesmen of that ignoble time who wallowed in this mire and who, decorated with dripping filth, received the plaudits of their fellow-men. The noble, the really patriotic, were the victims of mobs, and the shameless were clad in the robes of office.

But let us speak no word of blame--let us feel that each one acted according to his light--according to his darkness.

At last the conflict came. The hosts of light and darkness prepared to meet upon the fields of war. The question was presented: Shall the Republic be slave or free? The Republican party had triumphed at the polls. The greatest man in our history was President elect. The victors were appalled--they shrank from the great responsibility of success. In the presence of rebellion they hesitated--they offered to return the fruits of victory. Hoping to avert war they were willing that slavery should become immortal. An amendment to the Constitution was proposed, to the effect that no subsequent amendment should ever be made that in anyway should interfere with the right of man to steal his fellow-men.

This, the most marvelous proposition ever submitted to a Congress of civilized men, received in the House an overwhelming majority, and the necessary two-thirds in the Senate. The Republican party, in the moment of its triumph, deserted every principle for which it had so gallantly contended, and with the trembling hands of fear laid its convictions on the altar of compromise.

The Old Guard, numbering but sixty-five in the House, stood as firm as the three hundred at Thermopylae. Thad-deus Stevens--as maliciously right as any other man was ever wrong--refused to kneel. Owen Lovejoy, remembering his brother's noble blood, refused to surrender, and on the edge of disunion, in the shadow of civil war, with the air filled with sounds of dreadful preparation, while the Republican party was retracing its steps, Roscoe Conkling voted No. This puts a wreath of glory on his tomb. From that vote to the last moment of his life he was a champion of equal rights, staunch and stalwart.

From that moment he stood in the front rank. He never wavered and he never swerved. By his devotion to principle--his courage, the splendor of his diction,--by his varied and profound knowledge, his conscientious devotion to the great cause, and by his intellectual scope and grasp, he won and held the admiration of his fellow-men.

Disasters in the field, reverses at the polls, did not and could not shake his courage or his faith. He knew the ghastly meaning of defeat. He knew that the great ship that slavery sought to strand and wreck was freighted with the world's sublimest hope.

He battled for a nation's life--for the rights of slaves--the dignity of labor, and the liberty of all. He guarded with a father's care the rights of the hunted, the hated and despised. He attacked the savage statutes of the reconstructed States with a torrent of invective, scorn and execration. He was not satisfied until the freedman was an American Citizen--clothed with every civil right--until the Constitution was his shield--until the ballot was his sword.

And long after we are dead, the colored man in this and other lands will speak his name in reverence and love. Others wavered, but he stood firm; some were false, but he was proudly true--fearlessly faithful unto death.

He gladly, proudly grasped the hands of colored men who stood with him as makers of our laws, and treated them as equals and as friends. The cry of "social equality" coined and uttered by the cruel and the base, was to him the expression of a great and splendid truth. He knew that no man can be the equal of the one he robs--that the intelligent and unjust are not the superiors of the ignorant and honest--and he also felt, and proudly felt, that if he were not too great to reach the hand of help and recognition to the slave, no other Senator could rightfully refuse.

We rise by raising others--and he who stoops above the fallen, stands erect.

Nothing can be grander than to sow the seeds of noble thoughts and virtuous deeds--to liberate the bodies and the souls of men--to earn the grateful homage of a race--and then, in life's last shadowy hour, to know that the historian of Liberty will be compelled to write your name.

There are no words intense enough,--with heart enough--to express my admiration for the great and gallant souls who have in every age and every land upheld the right, and who have lived and died for freedom's sake.

In our lives have been the grandest years that man has lived, that Time has measured by the flight of worlds.

The history of that great Party that let the oppressed go free--that lifted our nation from the depths of savagery to freedom's cloudless heights, and tore with holy hands from every law the words that sanctified the cruelty of man, is the most glorious in the annals of our race. Never before was there such a moral exaltation--never a party with a purpose so pure and high. It was the embodied conscience of a nation, the enthusiasm of a people guided by wisdom, the impersonation of justice; and the sublime victory achieved loaded even the conquered with all the rights that freedom can bestow.

Roscoe Conkling was an absolutely honest man. Honesty is the oak around which all other virtues cling. Without that they fall, and groveling die in weeds and dust. He believed that a nation should discharge its obligations. He knew that a promise could not be made often enough, or emphatic enough, to take the place of payment. He felt that the promise of the Government was the promise of every citizen--that a national obligation was a personal debt, and that no possible combination of words and pictures could take the place of coin. He uttered the splendid truth that "the higher obligations among men are not set down in writing signed and sealed, but reside in honor." He knew that repudiation was the sacrifice of honor--the death of the national soul. He knew that without character, without integrity, there is no wealth, and that below poverty, below bankruptcy, is the rayless abyss of repudiation. He upheld the sacredness of contracts, of plighted national faith, and helped to save and keep the honor of his native land. This adds another laurel to his brow.

He was the ideal representative, faithful and incorruptible. He believed that his constituents and his country were entitled to the fruit of his experience, to his best and highest thought. No man ever held the standard of responsibility higher than he. He voted according to his judgment, his conscience. He made no bargains--he neither bought nor sold.

To correct evils, abolish abuses and inaugurate reforms, he believed was not only the duty, but the privilege, of a legislator. He neither sold nor mortgaged himself. He was in Congress during the years of vast expenditure, of war and waste--when the credit of the nation was loaned to individuals--when claims were thick as leaves in June, when the amendment of a statute, the change of a single word, meant millions, and when empires were given to corporations. He stood at the summit of his power--peer of the greatest--a leader tried and trusted. He had the tastes of a prince, the fortune of a peasant, and yet he never swerved. No corporation was great enough or rich enough to purchase him. His vote could not be bought "for all the sun sees, or the close earth wombs, or the profound seas hide." His hand was never touched by any bribe, and on his soul there never was a sordid stain. Poverty was his priceless crown.

Above his marvelous intellectual gifts--above all place he ever reached,--above the ermine he refused,--rises his integrity like some great mountain peak--and there it stands, firm as the earth beneath, pure as the stars above.

He was a great lawyer. He understood the frame-work, the anatomy, the foundations of law; was familiar with the great streams and currents and tides of authority.

He knew the history of legislation--the principles that have been settled upon the fields of war. He knew the maxims,--those crystallizations of common sense, those hand-grenades of argument. He was not a case-lawyer--a decision index, or an echo; he was original, thoughtful and profound. He had breadth and scope, resource, learning, logic, and above all, a sense of justice. He was painstaking and conscientious--anxious to know the facts--preparing for every attack, ready for every defence. He rested only when the end was reached. During the contest, he neither sent nor received a flag of truce. He was true to his clients--making their case his. Feeling responsibility, he listened patiently to details, and to his industry there were only the limits of time and strength. He was a student of the Constitution. He knew the boundaries of State and Federal jurisdiction, and no man was more familiar with those great decisions that are the peaks and promontories, the headlands and the beacons, of the law.

He was an orator,--logical, earnest, intense and picturesque. He laid the foundation with care, with accuracy and skill, and rose by "cold gradation and well balanced form" from the corner-stone of statement to the domed conclusion. He filled the stage. He satisfied the eye--the audience was his. He had that indefinable thing called presence. Tall, commanding, erect--ample in speech, graceful in compliment, Titanic in denunciation, rich in illustration, prodigal of comparison and metaphor--and his sentences, measured and rhythmical, fell like music on the enraptured throng.

He abhorred the Pharisee, and loathed all conscientious fraud. He had a profound aversion for those who insist on putting base motives back of the good deeds of others. He wore no mask. He knew his friends--his enemies knew him.

He had no patience with pretence--with patriotic reasons for unmanly acts. He did his work and bravely spoke his thought.

Sensitive to the last degree, he keenly felt the blows and stabs of the envious and obscure--of the smallest, of the weakest--but the greatest could not drive him from conviction's field. He would not stoop to ask or give an explanation. He left his words and deeds to justify themselves.

He held in light esteem a friend who heard with half-believing ears the slander of a foe. He walked a highway of his own, and kept the company of his self-respect. He would not turn aside to avoid a foe--to greet or gain a friend.

In his nature there was no compromise. To him there were but two paths--the right and wrong. He was maligned, misrepresented and misunderstood--but he would not answer. He knew that character speaks louder far than any words. He was as silent then as he is now--and his silence, better than any form of speech, refuted every charge.

He was an American--proud of his country, that was and ever will be proud of him. He did not find perfection only in other lands. He did not grow small and shrunken, withered and apologetic, in the presence of those upon whom greatness had been thrust by chance. He could not be overawed by dukes or lords, nor flattered into vertebrate-less subserviency by the patronizing smiles of kings. In the midst of conventionalities he had the feeling of suffocation. He believed in the royalty of man, in the sovereignty of the citizen, and in the matchless greatness of this Republic.

He was of the classic mould--a figure from the antique world. He had the pose of the great statues--the pride and bearing of the intellectual Greek, of the conquering Roman, and he stood in the wide free air as though within his veins there flowed the blood of a hundred kings.

And as he lived he died. Proudly he entered the darkness--or the dawn--that we call death. Unshrinkingly he passed beyond our horizon, beyond the twilight's purple hills, beyond the utmost reach of human harm or help--to that vast realm of silence or of joy where the innumerable dwell, and he has left with us his wealth of thought and deed--the memory of a brave, imperious, honest man, who bowed alone to death.

A TRIBUTE TO RICHARD H. WHITING.

New York, May 24., 1888.

MY FRIENDS: The river of another life has reached the sea.

Again we are in the presence of that eternal peace that we call death.

My life has been rich in friends, but I never had a better or a truer one than he who lies in silence here. He was as steadfast, as faithful, as the stars.

Richard H. Whiting was an absolutely honest man. His word was gold--his promise was fulfillment--and there never has been, there never will be, on this poor earth, any thing nobler than an honest, loving soul.

This man was as reliable as the attraction of gravitation--he knew no shadow of turning. He was as generous as autumn, as hospitable as summer, and as tender as a perfect day in June. He forgot only himself, and asked favors only for others. He begged for the opportunity to do good--to stand by a friend, to support a cause, to defend what he believed to be right.

He was a lover of nature--of the woods, the fields and flowers. He was a home-builder. He believed in the family and the fireside--in the sacredness of the hearth.

He was a believer in the religion of deed, and his creed was to do good. No man has ever slept in death who nearer lived his creed.

I have known him for many years, and have yet to hear a word spoken of him except in praise.

His life was full of honor, of kindness and of helpful deeds. Besides all, his soul was free. He feared nothing, except to do wrong. He was a believer in the gospel of help and hope. He knew how much better, how much more sacred, a kind act is than any theory the brain has wrought.

The good are the noble. His life filled the lives of others with sunshine. He has left a legacy of glory to his children. They can truthfully say that within their veins is right royal blood--the blood of an honest, generous man, of a steadfast friend, of one who was true to the very gates of death.

If there be another world, another life beyond the shore of this,--if the great and good who died upon this orb are there,--then the noblest and the best, with eager hands, have welcomed him--the equal in honor, in generosity, of any one that ever passed beyond the veil.

To me this world is growing poor. New friends can never fill the places of the old.

Farewell! If this is the end, then you have left to us the sacred memory of a noble life. If this is not the end, there is no world in which you, my friend, will not be loved and welcomed. Farewell!

A TRIBUTE TO COURTLANDT PALMER.

New York, July 26, 1888.

MY FRIENDS: A thinker of pure thoughts, a speaker of brave words, a doer of generous deeds has reached the silent haven that all the dead have reached, and where the voyage of every life must end; and we, his friends, who even now are hastening after him, are met to do the last kind acts that man may do for man--to tell his virtues and to lay with tenderness and tears lay ashes in the sacred place of rest and peace.

Some one has said, that in the open hands of death we find only what they gave away.

Let us believe that pure thoughts, brave words and generous deeds can never die. Let us believe that they bear fruit and add forever to the well-being of the human race. Let us believe that a noble, self-denying life increases the moral wealth of man, and gives assurance that the future will be grander than the past.

In the monotony of subservience, in the multitude of blind followers, nothing is more inspiring than a free and independent man--one who gives and asks reasons; one who demands freedom and gives what he demands; one who refuses to be slave or master. Such a man was Courtlandt Palmer, to whom we pay the tribute of respect and love.

He was an honest man--he gave the rights he claimed. This was the foundation on which he built. To think for himself--to give his thought to others; this was to him not only a privilege, not only a right, but a duty.

He believed in self-preservation--in personal independence--that is to say, in manhood.

He preserved the realm of mind from the invasion of brute force, and protected the children of the brain from the Herod of authority.

He investigated for himself the questions, the problems and the mysteries of life. Majorities were nothing to him. No error could be old enough--popular, plausible or profitable enough--to bribe his judgment or to keep his conscience still.

He knew that, next to finding truth, the greatest joy is honest search.

He was a believer in intellectual hospitality, in the fair exchange of thought, in good mental manners, in the amenities of the soul, in the chivalry of discussion.

He insisted that those who speak should hear; that those who question should answer; that each should strive not for a victory over others, but for the discovery of truth, and that truth when found should be welcomed by every human soul.

He knew that truth has no fear of investigation--of being understood. He knew that truth loves the day--that its enemies are ignorance, prejudice, egotism, bigotry, hypocrisy, fear and darkness, and that intelligence, candor, honesty, love and light are its eternal friends.

He believed in the morality of the useful--that the virtues are the friends of man--the seeds of joy.

He knew that consequences determine the quality of actions, and "that whatsoever a man sows that shall he also reap."

In the positive philosophy of Auguste Comte he found the framework of his creed. In the conclusions of that great, sublime and tender soul he found the rest, the serenity and the certainty he sought.

The clouds had fallen from his life. He saw that the old faiths were but phases in the growth of man--that out from the darkness, up from the depths, the human race through countless ages and in every land had struggled toward the ever-growing light.

He felt that the living are indebted to the noble dead, and that each should pay his debt; that he should pay it by preserving to the extent of his power the good he has, by destroying the hurtful, by adding to the knowledge of the world, by giving better than he had received; and that each should be the bearer of a torch, a giver of light for all that is, for all to be.

This was the religion of duty perceived, of duty within the reach of man, within the circumference of the known--a religion without mystery, with experience for the foundation of belief--a religion understood by the head and approved by the heart--a religion that appealed to reason with a definite end in view--the civilization and development of the human race by legitimate, adequate and natural means--that is to say, by ascertaining the conditions of progress and by teaching each to be noble enough to live for all.

This is the gospel of man; this is the gospel of this world; this is the religion of humanity; this is a philosophy that comtemplates not with scorn, but with pity, with admiration and with love all that man has done, regarding, as it does, the past with all its faults and virtues, its sufferings, its cruelties and crimes, as the only road by which the perfect could be reached.

He denied the supernatural--the phantoms and the ghosts that fill the twilight-land of fear. To him and for him there was but one religion--the religion of pure thoughts, of noble words, of self-denying deeds, of honest work for all the world--the religion of Help and Hope.

Facts were the foundation of his faith; history was his prophet; reason his guide; duty his deity; happiness the end; intelligence the means.

He knew that man must be the providence of man.

He did not believe in Religion and Science, but in the Religion of Science--that is to say, wisdom glorified by love, the Savior of our race--the religion that conquers prejudice and hatred, that drives all superstition from the mind, that ennobles, lengthens and enriches life, that drives from every home the wolves of want, from every heart the fiends of selfishness and fear, and from every brain the monsters of the night.

He lived and labored for his fellow-men. He sided with the weak and poor against the strong and rich. He welcomed light. His face was ever toward the East.

According to his light he lived. "The world was his country--to do good his religion." There is no language to express a nobler creed than this; nothing can be grander, more comprehensive, nearer perfect. This was the creed that glorified his life and made his death sublime.

He was afraid to do wrong, and for that reason was not afraid to die.

He knew that the end was near. He knew that his work was done. He stood within the twilight, within the deepening gloom, knowing that for the last time the gold was fading from the West and that there could not fall again within his eyes the trembling lustre of another dawn. He knew that night had come, and yet his soul was filled with light, for in that night the memory of his generous deeds shone out like stars.

What can we say? What words can solve the mystery of life, the mystery of death? What words can justly pay a tribute to the man who lived to his ideal, who spoke his honest thought, and who was turned aside neither by envy, nor hatred, nor contumely, nor slander, nor scorn, nor fear?

What words will do that life the justice that we know and feel?

A heart breaks, a man dies, a leaf falls in the far forest, a babe is born, and the great world sweeps on.

By the grave of man stands the angel of Silence.

No one can tell which is better--Life with its gleams and shadows, its thrills and pangs, its ecstasy and tears, its wreaths and thorns, its crowns, its glories and Golgothas, or Death, with its peace, its rest, its cool and placid brow that hath within no memory or fear of grief or pain.

Farewell, dear friend. The world is better for your life--The world is braver for your death.

Farewell! We loved you living, and we love you now.

A TRIBUTE TO MRS. MARY H. FISKE.

At Scottish Rite Hall, New York, February 6, 1889.

MY FRIENDS: In the presence of the two great mysteries, Life and Death, we are met to say above this still, unconscious house of clay, a few words of kindness, of regret, of love, and hope.

In this presence, let us speak of the goodness, the charity, the generosity and the genius of the dead.

Only flowers should be laid upon the tomb. In life's last pillow there should be no thorns.

Mary Fiske was like herself--she patterned after none. She was a genius, and put her soul in all she did and wrote. She cared nothing for roads, nothing for beaten paths, nothing for the footsteps of others--she went across the fields and through the woods and by the winding streams, and down the vales, or over crags, wherever fancy led. She wrote lines that leaped with laughter and words that were wet with tears. She gave us quaint thoughts, and sayings filled with the "pert and nimble spirit of mirth." Her pages were flecked with sunshine and shadow, and in every word were the pulse and breath of life.

Her heart went out to all the wretched in this weary world--and yet she seemed as joyous as though grief and death were nought but words. She wept where others wept, but in her own misfortunes found the food of hope. She cared for the to-morrow of others, but not for her own. She lived for to-day.

Some hearts are like a waveless pool, satisfied to hold the image of a wondrous star--but hers was full of motion, life and light and storm.

She longed for freedom. Every limitation was a prison's wall. Rules were shackles, and forms were made for serfs and slaves.

She gave her utmost thought. She praised all generous deeds; applauded the struggling and even those who failed.

She pitied the poor, the forsaken, the friendless. No one could fall below her pity, no one could wander beyond the circumference of her sympathy. To her there were no outcasts--they were victims. She knew that the inhabitants of palaces and penitentiaries might change places without adding to the injustice of the world. She knew that circumstances and conditions determine character--that the lowest and the worst of our race were children once, as pure as light, whose cheeks dimpled with smiles beneath the heaven of a mother's eyes. She thought of the road they had traveled, of the thorns that had pierced their feet, of the deserts they had crossed, and so, instead of words of scorn she gave the eager hand of help.

No one appealed to her in vain. She listened to the story of the poor, and all she had she gave. A god could do no more.

The destitute and suffering turned naturally to her. The maimed and hurt sought for her open door, and the helpless put their hands in hers.

She shielded the weak--she attacked the strong.

Her heart was open as the gates of day. She shed kindness as the sun sheds light. If all her deeds were flowers, the air would be faint with perfume. If all her charities could change to melodies, a symphony would fill the sky.

Mary Fiske had within her brain the divine fire called genius, and in her heart the "touch of nature that makes the whole world kin."

She wrote as a stream runs, that winds and babbles through the shadowy fields, that falls in foam of flight and haste and laughing joins the sea.

A little while ago a babe was found--one that had been abandoned by its mother--left as a legacy to chance or fate. The warm heart of Mary Fiske, now cold in death, was touched. She took the waif and held it lovingly to her breast and made the child her own.

We pray thee, Mother Nature, that thou wilt take this woman and hold her as tenderly in thy arms, as she held and pressed against her generous, throbbing heart, the abandoned babe.

We ask no more.

In this presence, let us remember our faults, our frailties, and the generous, helpful, self-denying, loving deeds of Mary Fiske.

A TRIBUTE TO HORACE SEAVER.

At Paine Hall, Boston, August 25, 1889.

* The eulogy pronounced at the funeral of Horace Shaver In
Paine Hall last Sunday was the tribute of one great man to
another. To have Robert G. Ingersoll speak words of praise
above the silent form is fame; to deserve these words is
immortality.--The Boston Investigator, August 28, 1889.

HORACE SEAVER was a pioneer, a torch-bearer, a toiler in that great field we call the world--a worker for his fellow-men. At the end of his task he has fallen asleep, and we are met to tell the story of his long and useful life--to pay our tribute to his work and worth.

He was one who saw the dawn while others lived in night. He kept his face toward the "purpling east" and watched the coming of the blessed day.

He always sought for light. His object was to know--to find a reason for his faith--a fact on which to build.

In superstition's sands he sought the gems of truth; in superstition's night he looked for stars.

Born in New England--reared amidst the cruel superstitions of his age and time, he had the manhood and the courage to investigate, and he had the goodness and the courage to tell his honest thoughts.

He was always kind, and sought to win the confidence of men by sympathy and love. There was no taint or touch of malice in his blood. To him his fellows did not seem depraved--they were not wholly bad--there was within the heart of each the seeds of good. He knew that back of every thought and act were forces uncontrolled. He wisely said: "Circumstances furnish the seeds of good and evil, and man is but the soil in which they grow." Horace Seaver was crowned with the wreath of his own deeds, woven by the generous hand of a noble friend. He fought the creed, and loved the man. He pitied those who feared and shuddered at the thought of death--who dwelt in darkness and in dread.

The religion of his day filled his heart with horror.

He was kind, compassionate, and tender, and could not fall upon his knees before a cruel and revengeful God--he could not bow to one who slew with famine, sword and fire--to one pitiless as pestilence, relentless as the lightning stroke. Jehovah had no attribute that he could love.