ure of the
dead that they can hear no words of life. But it has happened that,
even whilst writing what I have just been uttering to you, the news
reached me that one, who two months ago was one of your number, who
this very half-year has shared in all the business and amusements of
this place, is passed already into that state where the meanings of
the terms life and death are become fully revealed. He knows what
it is to live unto God and what it is to die to him. Those things
which are to us unfathomable mysteries, are to him all plain: and
yet but two months ago he might have thought himself as far from
attaining this knowledge as any of us can do. Wherefore it is
clear, that these things, life and death, may hurry their lesson
upon us sooner than we deem of, sooner than we are prepared to
receive it. And that were indeed awful, if, being dead to God, and
yet little feeling it, because of the enjoyments of our worldly life
these enjoyments were of a sudden to be struck away from us, and we
should find then that to be dead to God is death indeed, a death
from which there is no waking and in which there is no sleeping
forever.

CHESTER ALAN ARTHUR (1830-1886)

If "Eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary and no more."
President Arthur's inaugural address is one of its best examples. He
was placed in a position of the gravest difficulty. He had been
nominated for Vice-President as a representative of the "Stalwart"
Republicans when that element of the party had been defeated in
National convention by the element then described as "Half-Breeds."
After the assassination of President Garfield by the "paranoiac"
Guiteau, the country waited with breathless interest to hear what
the Vice-President would say in taking the Presidency. With a tact
which amounted to genius, which never failed him during his
administration, which in its results showed itself equivalent to the
highest statesmanship, Mr. Arthur, a man to whom his opponents had
been unwilling to concede more than mediocre abilities, rose to the
occasion, disarmed factional oppositions, mitigated the animosity of
partisanship, and during his administration did more than had been
done before him to re-unite the sections divided by Civil War.

He was born in Fairfield, Vermont, October 5th, 1830. His father,
Rev. William Arthur, a Baptist clergyman, born in Ireland, gave him
a good education, sending him to Union College where he graduated in