FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   285   286   287   288   289   290   291   292   293   294   295   296   297   298   299   300   301   302   303   304   305   306   >>  
ride I jog myself and say, 'You stupid fellow, wake up! Do you see that? and that? Do you know where you are?' And my other self answers, 'Don't bother, I have seen so much I can't take in any more; and I don't care about it at all. I longed to get here. I have been more than satisfied with being here, and now I long to get back again.'" And, again, from St. Louis he writes:-- "I wish already that our heads were turned homeward, and that we had done the great tour, and had it not to do." There was also much of pathos in his speech at the Lotos Club in 1874, where he said:-- "One of the kind wishes expressed for me is long life. Let anything be asked for me except that. Let us live hard, work hard, go at a good pace, get to our journey's end as soon as possible; then let the post-horse get the shoulder out of the collar. . . . I have lived long enough to feel like the old post-horse,--very thankful as the end draws near. . . . Long life is the last thing that I desire. It may be that as one grows older one acquires more and more the painful consciousness of the difference between what ought to be done and what can be done, and sits down more quietly when one gets the wrong side of fifty to let others start up to do for us things we cannot do ourselves. But it is the highest pleasure that a man can have who has (to his own exceeding comfort) turned down the hill at last, to believe that younger spirits will rise up after him and catch the lamp of truth--as in the old lamp-bearing race of Greece--out of his hand before it expires, and carry it on to the goal with swifter and more even feet." He did not live long after his return from America. He took cold Advent Sunday, and soon was down with the sickness from which he never recovered. His wife was dangerously ill at the same time, and he made himself seriously worse by leaving his bed once or twice to go to her, where he said "heaven was." To this wife he had been a devoted lover for over thirty years, and retained to the last moment his chivalric devotion. To his children and his servants he was the ideal parent and master, and to every one who had known him personally the ideal friend. His parish was only a large family, where he was held in like honor and esteem. Would that we all in these restless times might find some of the secret springs of
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   285   286   287   288   289   290   291   292   293   294   295   296   297   298   299   300   301   302   303   304   305   306   >>  



Top keywords:

turned

 

sickness

 
Advent
 

Sunday

 

pleasure

 
comfort
 
spirits
 
younger
 

Greece

 

bearing


expires
 

exceeding

 

return

 
swifter
 
America
 
personally
 
friend
 

parish

 

master

 
parent

chivalric

 

moment

 

devotion

 

children

 

servants

 
restless
 

secret

 

family

 

esteem

 

retained


leaving

 

recovered

 
dangerously
 

highest

 

devoted

 

thirty

 

heaven

 
springs
 

writes

 

longed


satisfied

 

speech

 

pathos

 

homeward

 

fellow

 
stupid
 
bother
 

answers

 

consciousness

 

difference