CHAPTER XVII

HOME LIFE AND LAST DAYS

"I thank God that the Cross has been set up in the world, for thereby have I learned to know what Life means."

"I long to be risen from the dead, and fully alive as I was made to live! Nothing now looks captivating to me but to be altogether entered into God and quieted in the inspirations of true Faith." -BUSHNELL.

"After this it was noised abroad that Mr. Valiant-for-truth was taken with a summons by the same post as the other, and had this for a token that the summons was true, 'that his pitcher was broken at the fountain.' When he understood it, he called for his friends and told them of it. Then said he, 'I am going to my Father's; and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who now will be my rewarder.'" - Pilgrim's Progress.

BUSHNELL was a theologian oŁ the type that requires a knowledge of the life quite as much as an examination of opinions. His heart made him the theologian he was; hence a look at him in his home is necessary. We quote freely from his daughter in the Biography.

"First among my recollections . . . are the daily, after-dinner romps, not lasting long, but most vigorous and hearty at the moment.

"A playful use of the faculties seemed ever to present its ideal side to him, and it was thus that he joined with his children 'in the free self-impulsion of play, which is to foreshadow the glorious liberty of the soul's ripe order and attainment in good.' Thus he made of our childhood 'a paradise of nature, the recollection of which behind us might image to us the paradise of grace before us.' It was while watching the play of his own children with a graceful kitten that he conceived the idea which animates his 'Work and Play;' and in the same manner he drew from his own home experience the child loving chapter on 'Plays and Pastimes,' in his 'Christian Nurture.' Fun was

330

one element of his playfulness, constantly bubbling over from the deep spring of his most earnest thought, sparkling in unexpected places, and ever refreshing the long and dusty stages of life's journey. He was no storyteller or professed wit; but the droll side of a subject was always peeping out at him, and he let it flash from his speech along with his more serious conceptions, as if it had a right to be there. Twenty years of ill health did not quench this light, nor, even at death's door, extinguish it."

"Summer mornings and their dewy freshness are forever associated with him. The reveille which waked us from healthy slumber was often the brisk whetting of his scythe. Many a time have I risen, to watch him from the window, as he put in practice still his early theory of 'making the cross frictions correct each other.' He swung his scythe easily, cutting rapidly a broad, clean swath. It was his habit to rise very early, and to work for an hour or two in his garden before breakfast, roughly dressed. Work done, he took a heroic shower-bath, made a neat toilet, and appeared in the shady breakfast-room with smooth locks (they were usually, at other times, the reverse of smooth), and with a cheerful, composed mien, as he eon-ducted the family prayers. At breakfast the daily paper became, through him, the epitome of the world to us all. He brought to the reading all his resources, his thought on social philosophy; his knowledge of geography, chemistry, and geology;

331

his love of adventure, of mechanics, of architecture, and of engineering in its various branches; and throwing his own light on every subject, evolved from the daily telegrams a fascinating panoramic view of the world's life for the past twenty-four hours. Under his magic insight the most commonplace events assumed an unlooked-for meaning, and took their place in relation to all other events and histories. He had no unrelated facts.1 In all matters pertaining to our national welfare his patriotism was ever on the alert, and he saw on the horizon ' the cloud no bigger than a man's hand,' which to other eyes had hardly yet begun to threaten storm. At the dinner table he came to us from his thought world, from the writing of sermons or books; and then he was no more of the outward, but of the subjective and inward life. Then his very hair stood on end, electric with thought; his eyes had a fixed and absent look, and he forgot the name of a potato. His mind being far away, the present body fed itself hastily, and with little note of food or drink. It was no wonder that he experienced the horrors of dyspepsia. But for the enforced exercise of the after-noon, he would have been earlier the victim of untimely brainwork.

"Never was there such a companion for a walk or a drive, though he was a very careless driver. He saw twice as much as most people do out of

1 We regard this sentence as the most discriminating remark concerning Bushnell that we have ever seen.

332

doors, took a mental survey of all land surfaces, and kept in his head a complete map of the physical geography of every place with which he was acquainted. He knew the leaf and bark of every tree and shrub that grows in New England; estimated the water power of every stream he crossed; knew where all the springs were, and how they could be made available; engineered roads and railroads; laid out, in imagination, parks, cemeteries, and private places; noted the laying of every bit of stone wall, and the gait of every horse; buildings, machinery, the natural formations of geology, nothing escaped him. And the charm of it was, that whether he was planning some improvement or observing some natural beauty, it was all done easily, while he cut a cane from a roadside thicket, or brushed the flies from his horse.

"In the parental relation, he was, without effort or self-assertion, possessed of an unbounded influence. Always amiable and gentle at home, he rarely reproved, and gave few commands. I think I can still count on the fingers of one hand every occasion on which I received from him a real reprimand. Then every word told, for words were few, and brought a burning shame for the wrong. It was not the voice of his personal authority, but Right and Truth incarnate, which spoke through him, and spoke always to a convicted conscience. He was singularly obliging and considerate, and never called any one to wait upon

333

him, preferring for himself and his children a habit of personal independence and self-help. Even after he had been many years an invalid, he would not allow any one to carry up the wood for his study fire, and would arrive at the top of the second flight of stairs with his armful, panting, but still rejoicing in his victory over nature. He encouraged his little girls to help him in many a piece of domestic work, such as raking up the dooryard, or piling wood in the cellar, and, if he was overlooking our good old William, would generally do rather more than half the work, finding that easier than to show some one else how to do it."

The account of his final visit to his early home must not be omitted: -

"One autumn, when we were about to leave New Preston, my father said to his daughters, 'You may never be here with me again, and I want to take you to my old home and over the old farm.' We went, and saw the stalwart maples before the door of the homestead, which he had himself brought down as saplings from the mountain upon his shoulders and planted there. We drank of the delicious cold spring beneath a fine tree, where he used sometimes to take his nooning when at farm work, snatching perhaps a little time for study as a seasoning for the dinner pail. There was his boasted piece of stonewall, proof of the accuracy of his eye, as firm now as when he laid it fifty years ago. Each stone fits snugly in its place, the corresponding surfaces having come together

334

as if by some law of hidden affinity. It is doubtful if he was ever as well satisfied with any of his writings as he was with that stonewall. There, too, in the same field, if I mistake not, was the big boulder, in the shadow of which he had once prayed in youthful doubt and distress, with, perhaps, some unconscious allusion to the 'shadow of a great rock in a weary land,' and whence, even in boyhood, his heart had exhaled in mist at sunrise the dew of its heavenward aspirations. He spoke to us, as often before, of his good and wise mother, the notable housewife and caretaker, the discreet adviser and patient manager of wayward boyhood. Yonder, on the hill, was the church, - the meeting-house, rather, whither he used to trudge on Sundays at his mother's side, to listen to that old-time religious teaching, on whose' hard anvils of abstraction the blows of thought must needs be ever ringing.' There, down in the hollow, was the dam, which he built for his father's mill. The mill is long since gone to ruin, but the dam re-mains in good condition. Recollections crowded fast, and time was too short for all we would have liked to see. We were on our homeward way, and I believe it was indeed the last time I was ever there with him."

"One amiable peculiarity of his was his ready admiration for very young men of his own profession. No matter how slight the sapling, he saw hope in the growing tree, and had his encouragements and praise always ready. A man was apt

335

to be judged, first of all, by his legs and his manner of standing on them. He who could not stand straight and square upon his foundations, or who wriggled and twisted a body supported on weak, unsteady columns, found little favor in my father's eyes. But youth has infinite possibilities, and his imagination reveled in the possible greatness to be evolved from its chaos. At least, it was in this way only that we could account for his estimate of many young ministers. The most recent graduate of the divinity school, still floundering in things too deep for him, accepting and offering as equivalents for ideas the terminology of the schools, and struggling somehow to get expressed the thoughts he had but half thought, found in him a patient hearer and indulgent critic. We used to say that he was wont to attribute to the young speaker the thoughts, which he had himself had leisure to think out during the service. At the same time, he had perhaps too little regard for the super sensitiveness of morbid youth. He liked a sensibility which was large and full-toned, and which responded with harmonious vibrations to the touch of great inspirations. But that kind of sensibility which is only a source of irritable suffering to the subject he might pity, but could not understand."

"Of my father's paternal tenderness, shown daily in little ways, and sometimes, in rare moments, finding exquisite expression, this is not the place to speak openly. It may be guessed what warmth he radiated, if we recall that luminous revelation

336

of himself when he said, 'It is the strongest want of my being, to love.' Nor can we reveal the gentle, fatherly counsels, and the attractive personal religious talks, all the more prized because of their rarity. In such conversations it was always the winning, never the compelling side of religious experience, which he presented to us. In the light of such sacred revelations of himself, the life which he had been living before us day by day, year after year, was known by us to have its source, not in his own will merely, however high and fixed its purpose, but mainly in such inspirations as come from God himself. It was impossible to live with him and not recognize the freedom and spontaneity of his action. Every sacrifice was voluntary, and all his effort resembled play. And although this was more easily possible in a nature which worked with the ease and power of his, yet he believed, and we felt, that it was a living faith which made and kept him free. . . .

"But when all is said, there is nothing said which will make his image live again. One glimpse of his figure, as he walked along the street with that long, springy step of his, the cane swinging and pointing forward decisively as he went, would be worth it all. Or, if that were too slight ground for an acquaintance with him, the door of friend-ship even might be opened by a gleam of that penetrating smile which ever and anon illumined his grave face. Better still it would be to hear him talk for a moment in terse and picturesque phrase

337

about the common things of life, a new-coined word or a sharply fresh suggestion revealing the original mind. But it was in family life that he shone the brightest. Let it be no detraction from his magnitude that my father was largest and most ideal to those who knew him in the nearness of family life and love. It is they who know most of his zest, his enthusiasm, his inspirable faculty; of the wit and piquant flavor of his language; of the lofty and refined purity of his feelings and his habits, and his delicate considerateness for those who were dear to him; of his great unexpressed and inexpressible tenderness; of the reasoning faith which beheld the unseen."

The writer, having had but slight personal acquaintance with Bushnell, can give no account of him that would he of any value as compared with this tender and exquisite picture of his home life. Hence the liberal quotations made in this chapter in regard to his closing years.

It was in 1870 that the struggle of nearly twenty years began sensibly to draw toward a close. But though literally a decline, it was a period of work up to the very last, and, more than all, it was a period of self development and ripening into the ideal of his character. He began his life with a passion for God; it gave direction to his first theological expression; it runs through all his works and underlies his alleged heresies; it fills and crowns his life in these last years. To understand Bushnell, it is necessary to understand

338

this passionate sense of God. While spending some tune on the shores of Lake Waramaug, he writes to his wife in a strain almost ecstatic; hut if closely examined, it will he seen to be, like everything that came from him, severely ratiocinative. He could not feel in any way, nor on any subject, without an unconscious play of the reasoning faculty; or, it is better to say, without the action of his entire nature in its right proportions, the thought of God crowning and dominating the whole.

WARREN, August 7, 1870.

I have had some delightful times and passages since I came here such as I never had before. I never so saw God, never had Him come so broadly, clearly out. He has not spoken to me, but He has done what is more. There has been nothing debatable to speak for, but an infinite easiness and universal presentation to thought, as it were by revelation. Nothing ever seemed so wholly inviting and so profoundly supreme to the mind. Had there been a strain for it, and then it could not be. O my God! What a fact to possess and know that He is! I have not seemed to compare Him with any-thing, and set Him in a higher value; but He has been the all, and the altogether, everywhere, lovely. There is nothing else to compete; there is nothing else, in fact. It has been as if all the revelations, through good men, nature, Christ, had been now through, and their cargo unloaded, the capital meaning produced, and the God set forth in his

339

own proper day, - the good, the true, the perfect, the all-holy and benignant. The question has not been whether I could somehow get nearer, but as if He had come out himself just near enough, and left me nothing hut to stand still and see the salvation; no excitement, no stress, but an amazing beatific tranquility. I never thought I could possess God so completely.

To a friend he said: "If I had my life to live over again, there is one thing I would not do - I would not push."

To a stranger struggling against implacability, apparently under aggravated provocations, he wrote: "Great trials make great saints. Deserts and stone pillows prepare for an open heaven and an angel-crowded ladder. But you are indeed sorely probed, and from the depths of my soul I pity you. If this is any comfort to you, let down your bucket to the end of your chain, with the assurance that what is deepest and most tender in me is open to your dip. But your victory rests with yourself. Kinghood over the vast territory of self must be, in order to a genuine forgiveness. To tear yourself from yourself, to double yourself up and thrust yourself under your heels, and make a general smash of yourself, and be all the more truly yourself for this mauling and self-annihilation, - this is the work before you, and a mighty work it is. To accomplish this, we must be close enough to Immanuel to feel the beating of his

340

heart. By the time you are through your struggle, you will be a god, fit to occupy a seat with Christ in his throne. Kings alone can truly for-give, as kings alone can reign. You know the import of the Cross. Set your heart like a flint against every suggestion that cheapens the blood of the dear, great Lamb, and you will as surely get the meaning of Christ crucified, as that he left his life in the world."

In 1871, and in the years following, he spent a part of the spring and summer in Ripton, Vermont, at the Bread Loaf Inn. His letters are much in the strain of those already quoted, full of an ever-deepening sense of God, and of hope that he may live to carry out his work on "Forgiveness and Law." He writes: "What a comfort there is in the fact that God is a supreme Integer, helping us up always into range with himself." "I do not want to stay and wear away into feebleness. Let me go, if I may, with some sense in me." In August he writes to his wife: - "I have a good many very sweet hours in these wood walks and elimbings, never alone, but having my dear, shall I say revered, Friend with me. I had yesterday (Sunday) a delightful refreshment in reading, out of Goethe's 'Wilhelm Meister,' Vol. I., the 'Confessions of a Fair Saint.' I never read a Christian experience that so beautifully tallied with my own, the main difference being that the Fair Saint never had been much of an un-"believer, save as her friends, over-strict in ortho-

341

doxy, were obliged to trouble themselves much on her account. I was never more struck than by the observation, that living in feeling and subjective thought, independently of outward objects and works, 'tends, as it were, to excavate us and to undermine the whole foundation of our being.' As if it were a way to become hollow and finally vacant." The passage from Goethe goes on as follows: "To be active is the primary vocation of man; all the intervals in which he is obliged to rest, he should employ in gaining clearer know-ledge of external things, for this will in its turn facilitate activity." 1

It is not strange that Bushnell was struck with the resemblance; no description of himself could be closer. It is interesting also as showing sympathy with Goethe's views of religion. In many respects the two men were alike in the play of their minds.

While at Ripton he published in "The Advance" (Chicago) a series of suggestive articles on Prayer, and carried through the press his sermons on "Living Subjects." Meanwhile he was still busy with "Forgiveness and Law," a work which, whatever may be said of its theological value, had root in his deepest experiences. Nothing that came from his pen was more sincere. He attributed to God his own feelings and struggles in attaining to that forgiveness which he felt he must exercise

1 Dowden's edition, vol. i. p. 409. Further points of marked sympathy can be traced on page 382.

342

towards those who had ill-treated him. In July, 1873, he heard that his long labor for the Park in Hartford, and the erection of the State House within its grounds, had ended in success. He wrote to his wife as follows: -

"I see, by a little scrap in the 'Springfield Republican,' that the State-house battle is probably carried. Hang up the bow and the quiver now, and be at peace! Thank God, my days of war are ended! I will not fight again, even for Hartford. I am delighted now to spread myself out on the quiet of a last age, which I hope and pray may be my best. Perhaps my irresponsibility, my unengaged ness and clearness of burden, may do something for me physically; if not, I hope it will spiritually, at least."

During his last stay at Bread Loaf Inn he met Professor Austin Phelps of Andover and the Rev. Dr. George Bacon of Orange, New Jersey. With the latter he formed a warm friendship that proved of great service and comfort to him. The sojourn of Professor Phelps under the same roof furnished him the data for an elaborate article published in the "Christian Union" (now "The Outlook") soon after Bushnell's death. Quotations from it will be made in the next chapter.

The close of 1873 found him, as he wrote to Dr. George Bacon, "going steadily down, but contriving meantime to work a little." He had finished "Forgiveness and Law," but, as if suspicious of it, submitted it to friends, asking their

343

"most fearless criticism." In a letter to his life-long friend, Mr. Chesebrough, dated May 21, 1874, he says: "It is the newest thing I have done for the matter of it, and I have been suffering real oppression of mind from the uncertainty I am in, lest I may not have been able to adjust myself rightly in the statement." To Dr. Bacon he writes (May 4,1874): "I have a queer feeling about this book. . . . I seem to have struck out in it beyond the sight of land, uncertain of every-thing, yet afraid of nothing, and in some sense confident of finding my way into harbor." In this sentence we find the source of his confidence and of his uncertainty; the analogies confirmed his faith, hut they also "drove him out of sight of land." As with Plato, a too close look at nature dazzled him, and he drifted toward regions from which he had fled. When reminded by a critic in the "Christian Union" that he had pressed his analogy too far, he coincides unless the analogy be regarded as holding "only so far as our proper nature is compared with the divine nature." He seems to forget that it is the limit of resemblance that is the point in question. His fear lest he had heretofore looked too much on the manward side of the subject was unnecessary. The incarnation contains all the elements of the problem, and the development of that was the harbor to be sought. As often happens with a great original thinker, he failed to see the trend of his work taken as a whole. It did not set toward divine

344

self placating nor toward anything in that region, but toward the incarnation viewed as the life of God in humanity, where the grounds of forgive-ness are faith and obedience. With Bushnell's last word in regard to this book we have pro-found sympathy: "It is not summation of doc-trine that we want. We have enough of that. What we want a great deal more is something to give us greater breadth of standing and greater vitality of idea." But this was to be found not in the interior working of the Godhead, but where he had always been looking for it, in a fuller revelation of God in the world, especially in nature and the unfolding of society. What society meant he well understood, but nature had not spoken to him its great secret. It is pathetic to think oŁ him as standing on the borderland of evolution, but not entering it. Few would have so fully grasped its central meaning, and so clearly traced it to its divine conclusion. It would have corrected those aberrations of thought noticeable here and there in his references to nature, and turned the dream of his life into reality. His biographer speaks of his interest during these last days in the revelations of science, especially the correlation of forces, and says: "He welcomed them, not only for their scientific beauty and value, but because he believed them to fit so perfectly into the wider science of life, and to furnish images and interpretations so grand in the higher ranges of thought." After the publication of "Forgiveness and Law"

345

in the spring of 1874, his health sensibly declined, and he spent the summer in Norfolk, a beautiful hill-town in the northern part of the State. "While here he wrote: "I may last a year, or even five as a remote possibility, but I shall never be girded again, I think." He dwelt on his book, evidently with a question haunting him, yet confident, as he wrote to Mr. Chesebrough, that he had "gained something for the Gospel, by bringing it closer down to the analogies of nature; . . . Law and Commandment pack the world full of their analogies, composing, as it were, their analogue of the great salvation." Nothing is more satisfactory in these last days of Bushnell than his full fidelity to the early thought of his life; namely, Nature as the analogue of the Spirit. His life was rounded not with a sleep, but with a constant vision, full of delight and wonder, of the world in which he found himself. He had "no unrelated facts," and nature, with its laws and processes, always stood before him. as a clear sign and symbol of an eternal order. It is not worth while to assign this to any school of thought, philosophical or religious, for he did not come at it in that way; it belonged to him when a youth, and was self attested at every step in his life.

He returned from Norfolk in the autumn, "less renewed than ever before by change of scene and rest." It was at this time that the following pen picture was drawn by a minister of the city: -

"Who of us does not remember his spare figure,

346

muscular, active, with that energetic walk of his; not hasty, indeed leisurely, but with a kind of spring in every motion? Who does not recall the iron-gray hair, tossed carelessly about; the stout oak stick; the garments studiously unprofessional, yet never careless; a happy remove from both elegance and roughness? Who has not seen that face, so full of expression; the skin, of late so clear and transparent; the eye, large, deep, and inquiring; the easy recognition, the flash of wit, the blunt reply? These are all matters of common observation in Hartford; for he was one of the notables of the city; and when he walked abroad, many eyes followed him with reverential and eager looks. How we shall miss that marked figure, that cordial greeting, that eager look!"

"God spared his life till all men were at peace with him." It was not the peace of theological agreement except in a limited circle, but a peace conquered by a universal recognition of his great intellectual force, and of the fact that, whatever his doctrinal opinions might be, he was a power in the world of men, and an up builder in the kingdom of God. New England, however given to theology, is above everything else practical; and whenever it sees a man serving the world in high ways, it approves and praises him. That Hartford named its Park for him was not because he secured it, but because he was a man worthy in all ways to give the name. But though at peace, he could not rest. He despised formal logic, but was the

347

slave of reasoning logic. He would not nave been himself, had he not entered upon a study of the Holy Spirit. It was the field whither his path led from the first. He had dwelt among analogies; he came at last into that which they shadow forth. In this last year he projected a treatise on "Inspiration; Its Modes and Uses, whether as related to Character, Revelation, or Action." The plan was a large one, but he could have made no other. Had he carried it out, it would have been rich in suggestion and prophetic in its outlook, but whether he would have compassed the infinite theme is doubtful. The world must wait yet longer, until its formal theologies are sloughed off or outgrown, and also until a study of man and of nature has furnished sufficient knowledge, before any man can duly lay hold of That which under-lies all things, even if it be not the sum of all things. It still bloweth where it listeth, and no man can tell whence it cometh and whither it goeth. The five brief chapters that were written abound in characteristic expressions, but there is not much that is in advance of his second discourse in "Sermons for the New Life," or of "Vicarious Sacrifice" (part third, chapter fourth). The outline is broad and clear, but the writing shows the limitations of strength. There breathes in it, however, a spirit of confidence and reality that makes it an integral part of all his previous work. His writing ends in the middle of a sentence, and after that we have only a few letters

348

and the recollections of friends to tell us of the remainder of his life. In the spring of 1875 he suffered a severe illness, from which he only re-covered sufficiently to drive, and to walk a little. He spent hours in the Park watching the building of the State Capitol. He took some part in arranging for a new edition of his works, and showed his kindness and good sense in leaving out "Christ in Theology" as of no consequence, "being only the answer I made to my accusers." He insisted that the order should be that in which he wrote: "The only endurable way is to put matters historically, and let the free movement be always correcting itself." A great tenderness, which, however, was always in him, comes out in his last letters, especially in those to Dr. George Bacon, whose gentleness and intellectual keenness greatly won him, and all the more because he was showing of the same malady. The correspondent with whom he exchanged more letters than, with any one else outside of his family was Dr. Bartol. The visible sign of their friendship came to a close in an exchange of letters here given, eternal but not sad farewells: -

BOSTON, April 8, 1875.

MY DEAR FRIEND, - I hear of your increased Accept my persuasion of your everlasting life and health. You and I believe in the same and Destiny. Should it be appointed for you to take first, take my love on board the you sail in; and send such

349

token as you may, back to my soul, of your blessed making port.

From one to whom, your inmost is dear.

C. A. BARTOL.

HARTFORD, December 31, 1875.

MY DEAR FRIEND, Your very dear letter, which came to me last spring as a waft of fresh life, when I was just climbing up out of the river, has not been answered yet. Had it been less valued, it would have been answered sooner. But I have waited to be myself again; for just to put words together in the clumsy conjunctions of faculty benumbed, brushing off the dew of old remembrance in words that I would like to answer fitly, is no comfort to me or courtesy to them.

For the first six months I made only the slowest possible improvement; but since that time I seem to have been losing ground rather, till now it begins to be clear that your letter never will be answered, unless it should be true, in a sense not intended, that I am now the "half-way over;" for it really seems to me that a full half my faculty the better and more capable is somehow escaped, and that only the duller and more wooden part remains. However this may be, my boat swings drowsily, and I am no way disturbed or put to the strain by what is before me. Is it that I am believing less than I did, or more? Is it that I have found a way in behind the visions, where the Word of God is, and, seeing all in Him, hold everything easy and quiet?

350

Well, my dear brother, I will only say God bless you, and farewell. We shall touch bottom here shortly, and that, I hope, in righteousness.

With great regard that cannot die, your brother, HORACE BUSHNELL

It is interesting to notice in Bushnell's letter the italicized Word. The two friends did not agree as to the person of Christ, but both could say Logos, and mean essentially the same thing. In Bushnell it was a final affirmation of the dominant truth of his life.

Little remains to be told. Early in 1876 the illness of the previous spring recurred, and he gradually sank toward the close. Not much is told us of what he said and did in those last days, but whatever we have shows a continuance and deepening of his strongest qualities. When too weak to leave his bed, he kept his cane near him, as a sign of his continued interest in the outer world. Symbol still! A constant humor overspread his talk; even his dying was "play" to him, - so true was he to his first great utterance. Of the fourteenth and fifteenth chapters of St. John he said: "What a soft and sweet enfolding of all highest things; "no common and hackneyed thought; such he never had. His household and the city were the last things that engaged his mind. On the final day of full consciousness it was announced to him that the Park he had conceived and brought to realization had

351

been named for him. When told that the poor Irishman who carried the message had said, "This is how we all wanted it to be," he responded with a smile that spoke his gratitude to the people. To his family he gave his benediction: -

"Well, now, we are all going home together; and I say, the Lord be with you - and in grace - and peace - and love - and that is the way I have come along home."

He died on the morning of February 17, 1876, at the age of seventy-four years.

Previous Chapter | Next Chapter | Table of Contents