eaks or preaches or writes, he opens his intellectual
box and takes the first appropriate thing that comes to hand.

I do not believe we have a more trustworthy historian than
Dr. Hale, so far as giving us the motive and pith and essence
of great transactions. He is sometimes criticised for inaccuracy
in dates or matters that are trifling or incidental. I suppose
that comes from the fact that while he stores away in his
mind everything that is essential, and trusts to his memory
for that, he has not the time, which less busy men have, to
verify every unsubstantial detail before he speaks or writes.
Sir Thomas Browne put on record his opinion of such critics
in the "Christian Morals."

"Quotation mistakes, inadvertency, expedition and human Lapses,
may make not only Moles but Warts in learned Authors, who
notwithstanding, being judged by the capital matter, admit
not of disparagement. I should unwillingly affirm that Cicero
was but slightly versed in Homer, because in his Work _De
Gloria_ he ascribed those verses unto Ajax, which were delivered
by Hector. Capital Truths are to be narrowly eyed, collateral
Lapses and circumstantial deliveries not to be too strictly
sifted. And if the substantial subject be well forged out,
we need not examine the sparks which irregularly fly from
it."

When Dr. Hale was eighty years old, his countrymen manifested
their affection for him in a manner which I think no other
living man could have commanded. It was my great privilege
to be asked to say to him what all men were thinking, at a
great meeting in Boston. The large and beautiful hall was
thronged with a very small portion of his friends. If they
had all gathered, the City itself would have been thronged.
I am glad to associate my name with that of my beloved teacher
and friend by preserving here what I said. It is a feeble
and inadequate tribute.

The President of the United States spoke for the whole country
in the message which he sent:

WHITE HOUSE, WASHINGTON, Mar. 25, 1902.

_My dear Sen. Hoar:_ I very earnestly wish I could be at
the meeting over which you are to preside in honor of the
eightieth birthday of Edward Everett Hale. A classical allusion
or comparison is always very trite; but I suppose all of us
who have read the simpler classical books think of Timoleon
in his last days at Syracuse, loved and honored in his old
age by the fellow citizens in whose service he had spent the
strength of his bes