it. Life is short, and books are
many. Instead of making your mind a garret crowded with rubbish, make
it a parlour, substantially furnished, beautifully arranged, in which
you would not be ashamed to have the whole world enter.

There was so much in the world to provoke the soul, and yet all
persecution is a blessing in some way. The so-called modern literature,
towards the close of the nineteenth century, was becoming more and more
the illegitimate offspring of immaturity in thought and feeling. We were
the slaves of our newspapers; each morning a library was thrown on our
doorstep. But what a jumbled, inconsequent, muddled-up library! It was
the best that could be made in such a hurry, and it satisfied most of
us, though I believe there were conservative people who opened it only
to read the marriage and the death notices. The latter came along fast
enough.

In January, 1888, that well-known American jurist and illustrious
Brooklynite, Judge Joseph Neilson, died. He was an old friend of mine,
of everyone who came upon his horizon. For a long while he was an
invalid, but he kept this knowledge from the world, because he wanted no
public demonstration. The last four years of his life he was confined to
his room, where he sat all the while calm, uncomplaining, interested in
all the affairs of the world, after a life of active work in it. He
belonged to that breed which has developed the brain and brawn of
American character--the Scotch-Irish. If Christianity had been a
fallacy, Judge Neilson would have been just the man to expose it. He who
on the judicial bench sat in solemn poise of spirit, while the ablest
jurists and advocates of the century were before him to be prompted,
corrected, or denied, was not the man to be overcome by a religion of
sophistry or mere pretence. Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase said that he
had studied the Christian religion as he had studied a law case, and
concluded that it was divine. Judge Neilson's decisions will be quoted
in court rooms as long as Justice holds its balance. The supremacy of a
useful life never leaves the earth--its influence remains behind.

The whole world, it seemed to me, was being spiritualised by the
influences of those whose great moments on earth had planted tangible
and material benefits, years after they themselves were invisible. It
was an elemental fact in the death chamber of Mr. Roswell, the great
botanist, in England; in the relieved anxieties in Berlin; in