Excerpt from Poems and Random Rhymes

But now the end has come: the rest he longed for has been grant ed him. The friend for whom he waited has arrived; and to these whose hearts are heavy: to his mourning family and friends, to his faithful wife, his children of whom he was so fond and proud, there is consolation in the thought, that he has done withthe cares and sor rows of this life He can never suffer more, never feel again the chill of death, never part with those he loved, his heart can break no more, he has shed his last tear and upon his brow is set the wondrous seal of everlasting peace.

Notwithstanding his years of sickness he lived nearly to three score years and ten. He lived and loved and suffered as must all mankind; he had his hours of gladness and of tears. In a fragment of a poem written by himself on the sixtieth anniversary of his birth we find his own statement of what his life has been. He says: My life has seen its three score years, With larger share of smiles than tears, With some success, enough to meet: The bitter with a share of sweet. From the far past my memory brings A legion of remembered things, That one by one, have come to me, And through my life been company. My early home, my school-boy days, The Sunday worship, prayer and praise, The healthy labor on the farm, The out-door, nature's pleasant charm. The songs my mother used to sing, Till teardrops to my eyes would spring, The moral lessons, line on line, My father gave me to be mine, And added to his precepts true The strength of good example too.

This fragment from his own pen gives us the key to his life and character. He loved truth and justice. His nature was joyous, sincere and affectionate, his mind was instinctively pure, poetic and refined. He was a modest, unassuming and educated gentleman, yet with it all he was a man of strong convictions and character. The splendid courage which sustained him in his last days was characteristic of his life; he defended with fearless fairness and convincing logic the principles which he championed. His strength, however, was not of the aggressive or self-assertive type whose blows strike fire. His hand was never mailed. His weapons left no scars, his satire was not barbed. His strength was that of the swaying, yielding but unbreakable cable. He believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. His creed was the Golden Rule; he believed in the religion of humanity and the reign of law. He believed in the immortality of the human soul', but he believed with another whose language I quote, that the idea of immortality, which like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, of any religion or of any creed; that it was born of human affection and will continue to ebb and flow beneath the clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death; that it is the rainbow hepe, shining upon the tears of grief.

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