Scrapbook: Anna McFarland Stabler, c. 1875- c.1812

ReadAboutContentsHelp
Bound scrapbook compiled by Anna McFarland Stabler of Sandy Spring, Maryland from approximately 1875 to 1912. The scrapbook largely contains newspaper clippings on a variety of topics wit a few personal momentos and additional ephemera.

Pages

Page 176
Complete

Page 176

Mrs. Browning will apply:

For none of all your words will let me go, Like sweet verbena, which, being brushed against, Will hold us three hours after by the swell, In spite of long walks upon windy hills.

A little reflection would show the folly of abusing a noble language and degrading self. We spend laborious years in study of the Latin and the Greek, as an absolute necessity to a com-

Last edit about 3 years ago by Menna
Page 177
Incomplete

Page 177

MACFARLAND-At his reidence, No. 2644 Portland street, Los Angeles, April 10, 1902, adter a short illness, John D. Macfarland

This page is incompleteEdit this page
Last edit over 2 years ago by River567
Page 178
Incomplete

Page 178

100

1883.-

DEATH OF EDWARD STABLER.

Remarkable History of a Veteran Maryland Postmaster. [Special Dispatch to the Baltimore Sun.]

ROCKVILLE, MD., Sept. 5.—Mr. Edward Stabler died at 9 o'clock last night at Sandy Spring, Montgomery county, where he had been the postmaster for more than 50 years. He was nearly 89 years of age, and had been ill for several weeks, during which time his death was expected to occur at almost any moment. His trouble was disease of the heart, complicated by infirmities incident to advanced age.

Mr. Stabler was born at Harewood, Montgomery county, Md., September 26, 1794. His father was Dr. William Stabler, of Petersburg, Va., and his mother Deborah Pleasants, of Goochland county, Va. His grandfather, Edward Stabler, was a prominent shipping merchant of Petersburg and came from York, England, in 1752.

Mr. Stabler's father died in 1806. When he was fourteen years of age he was sent to live with his uncle, Edward Stabler, of Alexandria, Va., to learn the drug business. In 1816 he removed to Baltimore and became a partner in the house of Norris & Brooke, importers of hardware. He attended at the same time a course of medical lectures at the University of Maryland, but owing to ill health was not able to complete his course of study, and in 1821 he was forced to relinquish his business and remove to Sandy Spring, where he engaged in farming on the old homestead. In feeble health and with very limited means, he undertook the discouraging task of earning a livelihood on a thoroughly exhausted track of land. In 1823 he married Ann R., daughter of Bernard Gilpin, a resident of the same neighborhood.

About this time he took up the business of seal engraving and die sinking, having no previous knowledge of it, but a decided talent in that direction. This proved to be a success, and he engaged extensively in the manufacture of seal presses, having built a shop and brass foundry for this purpose, all of the seals (in bell-metal) and cast steel dies being cut with his own hands. He furnished seals and presses for the various departments of the national government, the consular agencies abroad, and many of the States, together with seals for corporations, State and county courts &c., and was considered to be at the head of his profession in this country. He made among others the dies for the medals of the Maryland Institute and the press and die used by the Peabody Institute.

He was well known throughout the country as a writer on agricultural topics. His essay on "The Renovation of Wornout Lands," to which was awarded the first prize, offered by the publisher of the American Farmer in 1848, in competition with a number of distinguished Marylanders, was extensively copied throughout the country, and has been republished in the American Farmer within the past two years. Subsequent prize essays on "Underdraining and Ditching," "Drill Husbandry," were written in response to invitations for competitive papers by the Maryland State Agricultural Society. For these, also, he took the first prize.

Mr. Stabler was also known as the oldest postmaster in the United States in point of service. His brother, Jas. P. Stabler, was appointed postmaster when the office was established at Sandy Spring, but upon removing from the neighborhood and discontinuing his store the deceased was commissioned postmaster in 1830 by Wm. T. Barry, Postmaster-General during the administration of President Jackson, and removed the office to his residence. It was afterwards reopened in the store in the neighboring village of Sandy Spring, where it continues to be, but Mr. Stabler's commission as postmaster was never revoked, and he continued in office through all successive administrations to the day of his death, a period of 53 years, the duties of the office being discharged by the merchants who occupied the store from time to time.

As a sportsman and fisherman he was extensively known throughout Maryland and the adjacent States, and was a frequent contributor to the sporting press upon firearms practice, angling, &c., &c. He made valuable improvements in several of the present styles of breech-loading rifles and shotguns, among them the "magazine" attachment, which enabled the sportsman (using the Spencer and Martin rifles) to hold six to fourteen charges in reserve for any emergency. He hunted extensively (previous to the past five years) through West Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, being frequently accompanied by his friends, Francis P. Blair, Sr., Gen. M. C. Meigs, and other well-known lovers of the sports of the forest and stream.

Some ten years since he visited California and intervening States, and enjoyed rare sport among the buffalo and antelope of the foot-hills and plains of Colorado and Kansas, using his Roper repeating rifle, with telescopic sights (for long-range shooting) and the explosive hard-point balls, both inventions of his own. He killed three buffalo the first day out, at a range of 350 to 400 yards while in Kansas. The instinct for sport was developed by the state of his health, which required him to lead an out-of-door life as much as possible. He took a great interest in fish culture as well as angling. He wrote a good deal on fish culture, and was equally an adept with the rod and line and the pen and graver. During the administration of Mr. Chapman as mayor of Baltimore he introduced the black bass into Lake Roland.

Mr. and Mrs. Stabler had ten children, eight sons and two daughters, all of them now living. On December 24, 1873, they celebrated their golden wedding, with their en children, six children-in-law and eleven grandchildren.

Mrs. Stabler died after a short illness in May, 1882. Of the ten children the oldest daughter, Margaret, is the wife of James S. Hallowell, a prominent farmer, living near Brookeville, Montgomery county; Philip T., a farmer, lives near "Harewood;" B. Gilpin, Kate (both unmarried) and Arthur live at the homestead; Samuel J., an attorney at law in California: Louis C., living in Kansas City. Three of the sons live in Baltimore—Alban G., formerly connected with the Baltimore and Ohio and the Pennsylvania Railroads; Edward, Jr., coal merchant, Sun Building, and Jordan, family grocer, Eutaw and Madison streets.

Mr. Stabler, though never in robust health, was quite active to within the past year, when he was prostrated by an attack of angina pectoris, from which he rallied, however, and was in fair health until his last attack of debility and difficulty of respiration, growing out of the heart troubles, which occurred on the first day of August. Besides his 10 children he leaves 15 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. He was a member of the religious Society of Friends, of which his ancestry have been members since 1680. During the British invasion of Alexandria in 1814 he was conscripted for service in the District militia, but being a Friend could not conscientiously serve or pay the fine, he was committed to jail for three weeks, until President Madison, through Mrs. Madison, a life-long friend of Mr. Stabler's mother, heard of it and immediately ordered his release. He died in the house in which he was born.

THE LATE EDWARD STABLER.

His Funeral from the House in Which He was Born. [Correspondence of the Baltimore Sun.]

ROCKVILLE, September 6.—The funeral of the late venerable Edward Stabler took place this afternoon at his late residence, near Sandy Spring. In accordance with the wish of the deceased, many times expressed, everything in the shape of show was discarded. The remains were laid out in the room in which he was born, encased in a walnut coffin, very plainly dressed, with no inscription. A few tube roses, tastily arranged on a begonia leaf, were the only flowers used. On the side of the wall, and almost resting over the coffin, was a handsomely painted lithograph of the deceased, taken in hunting costume during one of his famous hunts in Meshack Browning in the glades of Allegany county many years ago. Around the room were other hunting sketches which quietly voiced his taste in that direction.

As the sun-dial, which stood in the middle of the yard, and which he had struck and erected in 1826, marked the hour of 4 o'clock, the remains of the deceased was borne from the house which had known him from infancy, and under the aged trees which he had gamboled beneath nearly a hundred years ago. The pall-bearers were Isaac Hartshorn, Henry C. Hallowell, Charles Abert, Asa M. Stabler, Charles G. Porter and Washington Chilchester. The funeral cortege was large, and composed of the immediate family relatives and friends of the deceased. At the Friends' church, which is but a short distance from where the deceased lived, there was quite a number in waiting. In the church the coffin was opened, and the friends of the deceased were invited to view the remains, after which, with no further ceremony, the procession moved to the adjoining graveyard, and in silence and sorrow the remains were laid to rest in sight of the window where his eyes first caught the sunlight of heaven. 1883.—

Death of B. G. Stabler. California [Poher?]

B. G. Stabler, who has been quite sick for some time, died at 3 o'clock yesterday morning. Mr. Stabler was 58 years of age and unmarried. He came here from Maryland in the early 80's and engaged in the fruit business in this county near the orchard of his brother, S. J. Stabler. He was one of the best posted fruitmen in this vicinity and was always genial and pleasant, making friends everywhere. His orchard is one of the best in the county and known as the Highland Orchard. At the time of going to press the date of the funeral has not been set. 1892

DEATH OF A MARYLANDER IN CALIFORNIA. 1892

Mr. B. Gilpin Stabler, a native of Montgomery county, died near Yuba City, Cal., on Thursday the 29th ult.

Eight years ago he went to California. He was an extensive grower of peaches and apricots and a producer of raisins from grapes dried in the open air. Mr. Stabler conducted a large fruit ranch in Sacramento Valley, in what is called the citrous district, where oranges and lemons are largely raised.

He was fifty-nine years of age and the first who has died of the ten children of the late Edward Stabler, who was fifty-three years postmaster at Sandy Spring. Two of his brothers, Philip and Arthur, and two sisters, Mrs. Hallowell and Miss Kate Stabler, are residents of Montgomery county, Alban G., Edward and Jordan live in Baltimore; Samuel J. in California, and Louis in Platte county, Mo.

The deceased represented two old Maryland families. His grandfather, Dr. Wm. Stabler, settled at Sandy Spring just 100 years ago at the place and in the house where Arthur Stabler, Cashier of Customs for the Port of Baltimore, now resides. His grand father, Bernerd Gilpin, whose name he bore, settled in the same neighborhood in 1775. The Gilpin family can trace their ancestry in unbroken line back to 1370.

By his expressed wish the remains were shipped east and buried at Friends' Meeting House at Sandy Spring, in sight of "Harewood," the old homestead, where the father and ten children were born. The deceased was unmarried, and ill about two weeks.

Death of Robt. M. Stabler.

Robert M. Stabler, a prominent resident of Montgomery county, Md., died at his home, "Edgewood," last evening. Mr. Stabler was a son of the late Caleb Stabler. He was one of the best known farmers in the neighborhood of Sandy Spring and was a charter member of the Enterprise Farmers' Club that was organized in 1865. His wife was Hannah Taylor of Loudoun county, Va., who was also a member of the Society of Friends. The widow, one son, Albert Stabler of this city, and five daughters survive him. His funeral will take place from his late residence tomorrow afternoon at 2 o'clock. Internment will be at Sandy Spring.

Death of Miss Lucy Stabler.

Miss Lucy Stabler, daughter of the late William Henry and Eliza Stabler, died suddenly at her home, "Auburn," at Sandy Spring, early Wednesday morning, aged sixty-six years, of congestion of the brain. She had been in delicate health for several years, but her death was not expected at this time. Miss Stabler was a granddaughter of William Stabler, one of the pioneer settlers of the county. April 28 - 1899

This page is incompleteEdit this page
Last edit almost 2 years ago by emilyfarrell
Page 179
Incomplete

Page 179

SUPPLEMENT TO THE CHRISTIAN UNION. NEW YORK, SEPTEMBER 28, 1881. Glymouth Gulpit. _____ SERMON BY HENRY WARD BEECHER.

----------

PRAYER BEFORE THE SERMON.

O, thou that dwellest in eternity, how shall we rise from our sphere and limitations to behold thine excellency. The glory and the power of thy being, boundless are they, transcending all that we know. Our wisdom is mocked by the thought of thine; strenght, and according to the glory of thy wisdom . We, confinedin this narrow sphere, go seeking the good that is of to-day and perishes with the morrow; and all our judgments, all our pleasures, are of the earth, all of them are confined, norrowed; all of them are poor and perishing. Thou art moving the wheel of universal affairs; and all creation is before thee, in the endlessness of its subjects and intrests, while we are studying thee and studying the fates of men from our intrests, from our homes, from the doors of our temples. We cannot understand thee, nor by searching can we find thee out. Some little twilight of thy glory falls upon us; but the image of it, and the full orb, who shall know? Grant, then, that we may not endeavor to judge thee by our ignorance. May we be able in all the overrullings of our desires, and in all the twartings of our plans, to say, The will of the Lord will be done. Thy will is golden. Thy thoughts and thy wish are boudless good. There is in thee no evil, no sympathy therewith, and all pain and suffering are but the schoolmasters that thou dost send forth- monitors, captations of salvation, to mankind. We thank thee that we may believe that over all the wisdom of life, over all the registered experience of mankind, there is a subline wisdom, and that there are plans in thine heart which never fail, which cannot be thwarted; which, running through time and wtwenity, shall being forth eternal glory. Now grant, we pray thee, O Lord our God, that we may rest in thee. How vain are our trusts! Our houses that we build perish, and they that built are forgotton. All the things that we work out from the feild, from the sea and from the heavens, do perish in the using. All our wisdom in days of great catasrophe and sorrow is the wisdom of children; and they that are strong, with lordly step, fall down as the weakest. Before thee all things are plain, O Lord our God; and we pray that thou wilt have compassion upon us. Have compassion upon our infirmities, yea and upon our sins; and grant, we beseech of thee, that we may have something of the strength which thou givest to thy children, when thou renewest their strength and givest them to mount up as upon eagles' wings. Thou hast laid thy hand heavily upon this nation. Thy servant, thine elect, whom thou didst ordain to be the head and leader of this great people, thou hast taken unto thyself, and in ways that fill us with horror and shame and sorrow in overmeasure. For him we have no supplicatio, but much thanksgiving that his toil is over, that his hand has plucked fruit from the tree of life, and that his voice, clear, is in sweet accord with the blessed music of the heavenly sphere. For him no moreturmoil, no more torment, no more fields of battle, no more strife, upon the couch, for life, but rest and eternal blessedness; and we rejoice that we have no occasion, now, to make petition in especial for the salvation of this nation, that thou hast brought more firmly together and inited in this common sorrow. That in this great affliction there has been no shock disorganizing the people, we render thee thanks. That thou art making it, as it were, a precious ointment, that thou art anointing this great people, and by this sorrow lifting them to a higher palne, we render thee thanks; and yet, in behalf of those whose house is made desolate, we pray, O Lord our God, wilt thou, this morning, hear our prayers for thine handmaiden, the mother, for thine handmaid, the wife and companion and counsellor, and for the children that brood in the nest. Will the Lord take them into the arms of his consolation, and endure them with that peace which cometh down from on high. Make all their way of life for them, and let that come to pass in their behalf which thou didst promise to the disciples of old, that, giving up houses, and lands, and all friends and all friendships, throughout the world, and in all times. May they, resting in the bosom of the love of this great people, be cherished and consoled and built up until the day of rejoicing shall come, when they may go home to rebuild in heven, on foundations immovable, the households that have been divided upon earth. Grant, we beseech of thee, thy blessing to rest upon thy servant whom thou hast called, in a manner so strange and unlooked for, to preside over the destinies of this nation. Spare his life. Defend him from secret or open assault. Grant that he may, through all the period of his adminstration have with him the wisdom of God. And as thou hast from the days of his youth brought him up to know and to believe in the Lord, grant in this emergency, when thou hast so strangely laid upon him the weight of this great people, that he may grid himself, not in his own strength nor in the wisdom of counsellors, ut in the strength of the Lord Jehovah. Be his God, that he may guide fitly, to thy honor and glory, and to his own excellent reputation in days to come, the affairs of this great people. And bless all the nations of the earth. They have sorrowed for us and with us. We reach forth our hands to beseech mercies upon them-peace, upbuilding, larger liberty, order and stability. We pray that the day may speedily come when all the nations of the earth shall be gathered together forever in a common faith, in common goodness. May the day come not only when sympathy shall flow upon great and Divine interferences with human affairs, but when the world there shall be one vein and one artery, and the blood of our kind shall flow side by side from every part of the earth to every part. Lord God of our fathers, fulfill to us in continuance all the promises which have been made to them. Grant that the prayers which have been laid up, and that overhang us as invisiable clouds, may rain continually upn us and upon our children, and yet extend themselves to many generations. We ask these mercies in the name of the Beloved, to whom, with the Father and the Father and the Holy Spirit, shall be praises evermore. Amen. --------------------- SERMON. THE BLESSED DEAD.* " As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him, and His righteouness unto children's children. I said, O my God, take me not away in the midst of my days; thy years are throughout all generations. Of old hast thou laid the foudation of the earth; and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment; as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall have no end."

THESE passages you will find in the 102d and 103d Psalms. How short is human at the longest! We spend our years gathering knowledge, and die just as we are prepared to use it!

This page is incompleteEdit this page
Last edit over 2 years ago by River567
Page 180
Incomplete

Page 180

312 THE CHRISTIAN UNION. VOL. XXIV., No. 13.

Removed not in the course of nature, but vilely done to death by a miscreant, all the more generous feelings of the alienated brethren of the South and the tender feelings of the North have come into perfect harmony and unison. The wounds of disruption and war, slowly healing will be mollified. There has been no division of our people in this great sorrow, none that rejoiced, none that silently were not sorry. For once the heart of the whole nation has beat together, and on a point most generous and pure and noble. Along the lines of march around the fields where fiercest battles were fought, in cities where secession ruled, there has been one common sorrow: as much in Charleston as in Philadelphia; as real in New Orleans as in New York. Nor have party lines, in all this land, divided or confined this sympathy. As before the coming rains of autumn the clouds disdain all boundaries, and know no States, but spread their drops wide abroad, so the tears of our citizens have fallen in a universal and undivided sorrow.

Still more striking, I think, has been the unity of mankind made manifest in all the sickness and in the death of our illustrious sufferer.

When Lincoln died, the world was more shocked than grieved. England was not yet enlightened. The hands of France were yet wet with the blood of Mexico. Other nations were waiting to see the unfolding of the great drama of war. But now there is no nation so obscure, there is no nation so imperial, or so different in language, institution and government, but that there has been a common expression of sorrow and sympathy and love. From the crown of the Czar, from the crown of the Empire of Germany, from the crown of the Queen of Empires, from the Pope in Rome, and from the home of the Mussulman in Constantinople, yea, and from the islands of the sea, and the far off nations China and Japan, there has been common fellowship. I think the drops of blood never before in the history of mankind have been driven by the heart of a common feeling throughout every part and realm of the human family. If this is the first time it is not the last. This is the sign that days are drawing near of a common fellowship among nations, and that the human family is not far from that point in which mankind shall be dear to every man.

And yet, no one can say that this has been a feeling simply of ordinary sympathy; it has been a feeling that surrounded his couch, of the deepest moral import. Was there ever before so much prayer uttered? Was there ever before prayer from so many differing views in religion. The pagan prayed to God as he named Him; the Mohammedan prayed to God as he thought of Him; the Roman Catholic prayed to God as He lay in his schedule; the Protestant prayed to God as he thought of Him; innumerable prayers in every language jostled each other at the narrow gate which leads to the ear of God; and God heard them. Did he not answer them? In the lower sphere, no; in the higher sphere, yes. Shall the prayer of faith, then, be counted as a fiction, as an invented device to comfort men in adversity? Though he wait long, God will avenge his own elect. He will come quickly, suddenly and powerfully, we are taught. Is there no answer to these prayers other than simply the continuance of life? If we are made wiser, and deeper, and stronger, and better, if this nation is fortified by his going more than it could have been by his remaining among us, if his administration not only was a blessing, but was to become a blessing to all the nations of the earth in his dying, is not this the sublimest answer to prayer?

Why do we pray? What is it to us that one man more dies? Men are dying everywhere, every hour. There is scarcely a neighborhood where some creature is not dying. Men must die; to die is as natural as to be born; and while if death comes near to us in kindred or in affection, we feel it, yet in respect to those that are disunited from us more widely we scarcely feel the presence of death to be a great affliction. So men are born of the dust to return to the dust.

Why should Garfield not die? It was because his life seemed to be to us as the life of a tree broad of branch, from every bough of which dropped down food and fruit for the needs of this nation. But if from those boughs, raised to a higher sphere, God can give the leaves which are for the healing of the nations over the whole earth, has he not done better than we asked or thought? It is good to pray, and it is good to have a faith that pierces beyond the rind, and opens the very pulp and substance of things.

There are some lessons to be derived from this national experience: one that I would wish to be universally studied and believed by the young and the ambitious that turn their faces toward public service. If this nation is as a stately mansion, then it has its beautiful front door where it receives those whom it would honor. It also has its doors behind through which are borne supplies of food, and out of which come the refuse to a very great extent. Millions of our young men seek to enter into the stately mansion of Government by the obscure and dishonored doors of the rear. The time has come when the young men should believe that to serve the country is better than to serve themselves; that honor is better than wealth; that fidelity is better than praise; that to have deserts is better than to have all coronation without deserts.

It is inherent in all government that we should send men to represent us in legislatures, and to be our rulers, who approve themselves to the judgment of those who elected them; and if the great crowd are themselves uninstructed, ignorant, it is of necessity the case that we shall send forth into our halls of procedure men often vile, often foolish, often wicked; and this can be borne; but we cannot bear to have the ideal of integrity destroyed, nor to have it go forth into the public apprehension that he that would be a politician must lay aside and disown honor and truth; that he must cease to be a man; that he must become drawn out like a thread, thin enough to go through the smallest hole. We must disabuse the heroic young men of the thought that ambition of public service has to be bought with base compliances.

When we behold a man, therefore, struggling by normal and honorable ways from the lowest position to which any are born in this life, equipping himself by the most self-denying and studious hours, and then taking his place first among the most brilliant of our statesmen, and the most noble and successful of our warriors, as the Chief Magistrate, honored of all nations; and when we behold that he has gone up to this eminence without complying with base devices or listening to the voice of the passions and appetites of men, it is a warrant of success in the right way; and his example shall be to all the young—as is the example of Washington, and many of our earlier rulers—a testimony that integrity and cleanness and honor are combatible with advancement, and with political power and success.

Shall I be stepping aside from the service of the day by saying that, in the simplicity of our habits hitherto, there has been no need either of guardianship around about our chief officers of Government; that as they came from the people, and were approved by the people, so they were nowhere as safe as in the hands of the common people? This is yet true. No European police can make kings so safe as public sentiment makes our officers in America. The temptation which the sense of wrong, long continued and hereditary, the sense of injustice and oppression that puts at defiance armies and guards and guardians and police forces, and that smites monarchs in their palaces, or on the thresholds of them, has no existence among us. Our laws are our own, and are subject to change any year when they cease to be beneficial. Our institutions are channels through which liberty runs. Our magistrates, borne with for a few years if they are less than good, revolve, and others take their place.

And yet, our legislation is incomplete. I would not have military guards about the President; were I in his place, I would rather take the bullet or the stiletto than walk forth day after day guarded from my fellow citizens; but, it seems to me, when the whole commonwealth has committed its interests to the Governor, the judge or the President, that any attempt upon his life is treason to the welfare of the whole community, and that death should wait even on the attempt at treason. If death is to follow crime it should be administered by the hand of the law. Assassination is a poor testimony to the abhorrence of assassination. Because Guiteau slew the President, no man in this land has a right to slay Guiteau. For our own sake, for the honor of our institutions, for the world's sake, that is tormented incessantly by irregular violence, let us stand for the administration of justice by its appointed instruments.

Not by any battle will this Republic win so great an estate of honor and of repute among the nations of the earth as by the fact that though the war had slain thousands and thousands, and squandered uncounted millions of our treasure, and enriched our land with the blood of our children, yet, when once the battle ceased, neither bullet nor sword nor halter slew one single man. The temperateness, the self-control, the loftiness of spirit that this nation manifested made a moral impression upon mankind that all the exhibitions of its physical and warlike strength failed to do. In this hour, if Guiteau suffers except in the course of law, duly administered, then we shall have a spot resting upon our escutcheon that neither you nor I can endure for one single moment.

I know what the feeling is of generous but untamed good, of unregulated justice; I know what it is to feel in my own bosom the impulse to rend the wretch limb from limb; I have fulfilled to the uttermost the command, "Be angry;" and I am prepared also to fulfill the other command, "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath." Indignation has had its day; now let law have its day. Then let no man talk, nor favor those who talk of violence, whatever may be the ends and the issues of justice in the case of this miscreant scoundrel.

I have a right to speak of him. He once was of us; he once, rather, was among us, but not of us. He sat in the classes of our schools. He thronged with others this sanctuary. I cannot dismiss him without a sense of mourning and of sorrow. I am sure that we should not be behind the immortal poet Burns, who in his address to the Devil, moved with compassion, at length hoped that in some way even he might turn a corner, and yet he saved. As Christian men, and men, let us hope that the dark and dismal tragedy of this man's life may not have an extension by any crime committed upon him by wanton citizens encouraged by a wanton public sentiment into which you have blown your breath.

And, lastly, what shall one say for that group of mourners who sit to-day together in a sorrow which may be somewhat alleviated, but which cannot be removed? The heart has no ears in its deepest moods. The mother should have been followed by her son. He has preceded her. The wife—who shall be to her the ideal hero? Though he be honored of this great people, though Garfield glorified must needs move her heart with gladness, alas! in this life love asks presence, sympathy; and chastened as she is, saintly as she is, as a Christian woman, in full faith, is there any other woman that more than she needs the prayers and upholding sympathy of this great nation? If her husband has laid down his life for us, we have poured forth day by day, in the most sacred places of our lives—in the closet, in the household—prayer that God would be more than a husband to the widow, more to the mother than any human being can be; and may the blessing of God, wet with the tears and enriched by desires of this whole great people, descend and rest upon the heads of his children; and may their father's name be to them a guiding light and a shield against all temptation, and an incitement to all honorable endeavor; and may the day come when the sons shall take their father's place, and the nation shall delight to honor them not only for the heritage of their name and lineage, but for the renewal of those qualities which have made Garfield a martyr, and added him to the galaxy that already shines so brightly of our great and noble citizens in heaven.

LIVING WORDS OF THE DEAD.

"Individuals may wear for a time the glory of our institutions, but they carry it not to the grave with them. Like raindrops from heaven, they may pass through the circle of the shining bow and add to its luster, but when they have sunk in the earth again the proud arch still spans the sky and shines gloriously on."

"Sir, there are times in the history of men and nations when they stand so near the veil which separates mortals from immortals, time from eternity, and men from their God, that they can almost hear the beatings, and feel the pulsations of the heart of the Infinite.

"Through such a time has this nation passed. When two hundred and fifty thousand brave spirits passed from the field of honor through that thin veil into the presence of God, and when at last its parting folds admitted the martyr President to the company of those dead heroes of the Republic, the nation stood so near the veil that the whispers of God were heard by the children of men.

"Awe-stricken by His voice, the American people knelt in tearful reverence, and made a solemn covenant with Him and with each other that this nation should be saved from its enemies; that all its glories should be restored, and on the ruins of slavery and treason the temples of freedom and justice should be built, and should survive forever." —[On the Anniversary of Lincoln's death, April, 1866.

[On the eve of his inauguration President Garfield addressed a meeting of his classmates assebled to do him honor, and in the light of these past few weeks his words, which we printed two months ago, seem to have received fulfillment, complete even beyond his anticipation.]

"Classmates: To me there is something exceedingly pathetic in this reunion. In every eye before me I see the light of friendship and love, and I am sure it is reflected back to each one of you from my inmost heart. For twenty-two years, with the exception of the last few days, I have been in the public service. To-night I am a private citizen. To-morrow I shall be called to resume new responsibilities, and on the day after the broadside of the world's wrath will strike. It will strike hard. I know it, and you will know it. Whatever may happen to me in the future, I shall feel that I can always fall back upon the shoulders and hearts of the class of '56 for their approval of that which is right, and for their charitable judgment wherein I may come short in the discharge of my public duties. You may write down in your books now the largest percentage of blunders which you think I will be likely to make, and you will be sure to find in the end that I have made more than you have calculated—many more..... This honor comes to be unsought. I have never had the Presidential fever—not even for a day; nor have I to-night. I have no feeling of elation in view of the position I am called upon to fill. I would thank God were I to-day a free lance in the House or the Senate. But it is not to be, and I will go forward to meet the responsibilities and discharge the duties that are before me with all the firmness and ability I can command. I hope you will be able conscientiously to approve my conduct, and when I return to private life I wish you to give me another class meeting."

This page is incompleteEdit this page
Last edit almost 2 years ago by emilyfarrell
Displaying pages 176 - 180 of 184 in total