livered the last
address of his public life. While seated at the beginning of the
exercises, his modesty seemed to overcome him, and he said: "I am not
prepared to address such a magnificent audience as that. Can not you get
somebody else to speak? I wish you would." "O no," I said, "these people
came to hear Henry Wilson." He placed a chair in the center of the
platform to lean on. Not knowing he had put it in that position, I
removed it twice. Then he whispered to me, saying: "Why do you remove
that chair? I want it to lean on." The fact was, his physical strength
was gone. When he arose his bands and knees trembled with excitement,
and the more so as the entire audience arose and cheered him. One hand
on the top of the chair, he stood for half an hour, saying useful
things, and, among others, these words: "I hear men sometimes say, when
a man writes his name on the records of a visible Church, that he had
better let other things alone, especially public affairs. I am not a
believer in that Christianity which hides itself away. I believe in that
robust Christianity that goes right out in God's world and works. If
there ever was a time in our country, that time is now, when the young
men of this country should reflect and act according to the teachings of
God's holy Word, and attempt to purify, lift up, and carry our country
onward and forward, so that it shall be in practice what it is in
theory--the great leading Christian nation of the globe. You will be
disappointed in many of your hopes and aspirations. The friends near and
dear to you will turn sometimes coldly from you; the wives of your bosom
and the children of your love will be taken from you; your high hopes
may be blasted; but, gentlemen, when friends turn their backs upon you,
when you lay your dear ones away, when disappointments come to you on
the right hand and on the left, there is one source for a true and brave
heart, and that is an abiding faith in God, and a trust in the Lord
Jesus Christ."

Having concluded his address he sat down, physically exhausted. When we
helped him into his carriage we never expected to see him again. The
telegram from Washington announcing his prostration and certain death
was no surprise. But there and then ended as remarkable a life as was
ever lived in America.

It is no great thing if a man who has been carefully nurtured by
intelligent parents, and then passed through school, college, and those
additional years of p