hese
forms of activity death and years have no power for destroying. The
swift steamboat and the flying train tell us that Watt and Stephenson
are still toiling for men. Every foreign cablegram reminds us that
Cyrus Field has just returned home. The merchant who organizes a great
business sends down to the generations his personality, prudence,
wisdom and executive skill. The names of inventors may now be on
moldering tombstones, but their busy fingers are still weaving warm
textures for the world's poor. The gardener of Hampton court, who, in
old age, wished to do yet one more helpful deed, and planted with elms
and oaks the roadway leading to the historic house, still lives in
those columnar trees, and all the long summer through distributes
comfort and refreshment. Every man who opens up a roadway into the
wilderness; every engineer throwing a bridge over icy rivers for weary
travelers; every builder rearing abodes of peace, happiness and
refinement for his generation; every smith forging honest plates that
hold great ships in time of storm, every patriot that redeems his land
with blood; every martyr forgotten and dying in his dungeon that
freedom might never perish; every teacher and discoverer who has gone
into lands of fever and miasma to carry liberty, intelligence and
religion to the ignorant, still walks among men, working for society
and is unconsciously immortal.

This is fame. Life hath no holier ambition. Some there are who,
denied opportunity, have sought out those ambitious to learn, and,
educating them, have sent their own personality out through artists,
jurists or authors they have trained. Herein is the test of the
greatness of editor or statesman or merchant. He has so incarnated his
ideas or methods in his helpers that, while his body is one, his spirit
has many-shaped forms; so that his journal, or institution, or party
feels no jar nor shock in his death, but moves quietly forward because
he is still here living and working in those into whom his spirit is
incarnated. Death ends the single life, but our multiplied life in
others survives.

The supreme example of atmosphere and influence is Jesus Christ. His
was a force mightier than intellect. Wherever he moved a light ne'er
seen on land nor sea shone on man. It was more than eminent beauty or
supreme genius. His scepter was not through cunning of brain or craft
of hand; reality was his throne. "Therefore," said Charles Lamb, "i