Excerpt from In Memoriam, Edward Theodore Cushing: September 2, 1845 April 6, 1909

I never suspected, and that was altogether beautiful. He always seemed to me a man almost detached from the lighter emotions and the minor affections that play so large a part in the life of the average man or woman. He seemed to find his supreme satisfaction in the consciousness of duty done, and it never occurred to me that there was a craving in his heart for tender words, or a yearning for manifested love. But when I called upon him in the days of his last illness, this love-note that lay so deep in his heart that it was hidden from observation, came forth into the light of day, and I saw in him not only the tempera ment of the stoic's great patience to bear and to endure, but also the temperament of the lover, of the one who longs for, and who longs with an intense passion, for reciprocity of affec tion, and for uttered devotion. He said to me one day when very near the end, Hold my hand, Oh, hold my hand, and as he spoke there was an unutterable pathos in his voice and an infinite hunger of love in his eye.

I should like to say a few words about Mr. Cushing in his relation to the church, for that was the world in which I saw most of him, and in which I knew him best, and to know himthere was to honor and revere him. He was a born church man, and he was endowed to a very rare degree with the ecclesiastical talent a talent that we find not often largely developed in the Protestant church. The Roman Catholic is born into the church. The church passion is cultivated from the first moment of conscious life in the Catholic child, and is an integral part of the nature and character of every true and conscientious Roman Catholic. But the Protestants I have known, with a few exceptions, seem to have been deficient in this beautiful gift. Mr. Cushing was one of these exceptions. The church was a great factor in his life. He loved it, he prayed for it, he served it, he lived bravely and manfully in the light it shed upon him, and he died sweetly in the hope of immortality, which is the greatest and rarest gift that the church of Christ confers upon its own elect.

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