D.C., 5 April, 1862."

With the foregoing came another poem, "In Commemoration of a Silver
Wedding," October 2, 1863, full of tenderness and pleasantry,--the
wedding of Mr. and Mrs. J. Pierpont Lord.

And on his eighty-first birthday, called by a strange mistake his
eightieth, there was another celebration, yet more solemn and affecting,
where the greetings and congratulations of his brother-poets, all over
the land, were sent to him and published in the newspapers of the day.

Among his later poems, the "E Pluribus Unum" appears to me most worthy
of his reputation, and least like the doings of his early manhood.

And now, though we had little reason to look for the prolongation of
such a life;--a continued miracle from the age of thirty or thirty-five,
after which he built himself up anew, by living as well in cold water as
in hot, and luxuriating in cold baths, and working hard,--harder,
perhaps, on the whole, at downright drudgery, than any other man of his
age, like Rousseau in copying music, as a relief from writing
poetry,--yet when death happens we are all taken by surprise, just as if
we thought God had overlooked his aged servant, or made him an exception
to the great, inflexible law of our being; or as if a whisper had
reached us, saying, "If I will that he tarry till I come, what is that
to thee?"

But enough; a volume of such memoranda would be far short of what such a
man deserves when he is finally translated. Faithful among the
faithless, may we not hope that his grandeur and strength of purpose,
and downright, fearless honesty, will have their appropriate reward,
both here and hereafter?

FOOTNOTES:

[1] And here I may as well mention a curious incident. When I wrote my
poem, I had never seen Niagara; but we agreed to go together on a
pilgrimage at our earliest convenience. One thing and another happened,
until I had been abroad and returned, without our seeing it together. At
last, being about to go to the South of Europe, I made a new arrangement
with him; but just as we--my wife and I--were ready to go, he was called
away to consecrate some church in the West, and we started on a journey
of two thousand miles through portions of our country I had never seen,
and was ashamed to go abroad again without seeing. On my way back we
stopped in Buffalo, and as I stood in the piazza I saw a little card on
one of the pillars saying that the Rev. Mr. Pierpont would preach in the
evening somewhere. I fou