What hours he would have spent in
confabulation with Gibbon! What secrets he would have learned,
without asking questions, from Napoleon and Cavour!
His interest embraced them all, some of them he could have
taught, many of them would have welcomed him as their peer. As he
mixed with high and low in his lifetime, so would it have been in
the past; and so will it be in the future, if he has gone into a
world where personal identity continues, and the spiritual
standards and ideals of this world persist. But yesterday, he
seemed one who embodied Life to the utmost. With the assured step
of one whom nothing can frighten or surprise, he walked our
earth, as on granite. Suddenly, the granite grew more
unsubstantial than a bubble, and he dropped beyond sight into the
Eternal Silence. Happy we who had such a friend! Happy the
American Republic which bore such a son!
THE END
Mr. John Woodbury, Secretary of the Harvard Class of 1880, in
sending to his classmates a notice of Theodore Roosevelt's death
on January 6, 1919, added this quotation from the second part of
Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress:"
"After this it was noised abroad that Mr.
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