ship of any cause was proof enough that it was good. His sunny temper won everybody over. "I never saw him come into my office," said a friend about him, "but I instinctively took down my check-book." He surrendered at sight. The news of his death, on February 9, 1878, came home to thousands with a sense of personal bereavement. Though he was but a private citizen, flags flew at half-mast all over the city. Rich and poor followed him to the grave, and the children whose friend he had been wept over him. In the reports of the meetings held in his memory one catches the echo of a nature rarely blending sweetness with strength. They speak of his stanch integrity and devotion to principle; his unhesitating denunciation of wrong in every form; his chivalric championship of the weak and oppressed wherever found; his scorn of meanness; his generosity that knew no limit of sacrifice; his truth and tenderness; his careful, sound judgment; his unselfishness, and his bright, sunny nature that won all hearts. The Union League Club resolved" that his life was a stirring summons to the men of wealth, of culture, and of leisure in the community, to a more active participation in public affairs" as a means of saving the State. Four years later his son Theodore was elected to the Assembly, and entered upon the career of public service which, by his exercise of the qualities that made his father beloved, set him in the Governor's Chair of his State. Other monument the people have never built to the memory of the first Theodore; but I fancy that they could have chosen none that would have pleased him more; and I am quite sure that he is here to see it. This is the story, not of a people in its agelong struggle for righteousness, but of a single citizen who died before he had attained to his forty-eighth year, and it is the material out of which real civic greatness is made. I know of none in all the world that lasts better, prophets of evil and pessimists generally to the contrary notwithstanding. I have been at some pains to tell it to this generation, out of charity to the prophets aforesaid. Let them compare now the son's life as they know it, as we all know it, with the father's, point for point, deed for deed, and tell us what they think of it. The truth, mind; for that, with knowledge of what has been, is, after all, the proper basis for prophecy as to what is to be. Or else let them come squarely out and declare that they have lived in vain, that ours is a worse country, every way, than it was twenty years ago, and not fit for a decent man to live in. That is the alternative, as they will see unless, indeed, they prefer to do as the squirrel does, just sit and scold. |