Near our home in Newton, Massachusetts, was that of F.F. Smith, who wrote "America." It was of him that Oliver Wendell Holmes said that "Nature tried to hide him by naming him Smith." Smith lived that quiet and restful life that reminds one of Tennyson's "Brook" when thinking of him. He knew the glory of modest living.

The last time I saw the sweet Quaker poet, John Greenleaf Whittier, was in Amesbury, before he died. He sent a note to the lecture hall asking me to come to come to him. I asked him what was his favorite poem of his own writing. He said he had not thought very much about it, but said that there was one that he especially remembered:

"I know not where His islands lift Their fronded palms in air, I only know I cannot drift Beyond His love and care."

I then asked him, "Mr. Whittier, how could you write all those war songs which sent us young men to war, and you a peaceful Quaker? I cannot understand it." He smiled and said that his great-grandfather had been on a ship that was attacked by pirates, and as one of the pirates was climbing up the rope into their ship, his great-grandfather grasped a knife and cut the rope, saying: "If thee wants the rope, thee can have it." He said that he had inherited something of the same spirit.

At Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, Bayard Taylor took me to the grave of his wife, and said "Here is the spot where I determined to live anew. From this grave the real experiences of my life began." There he was completing his home called "Cedar Croft." But he died while U.S. Minister to Germany. The Young Men's Congress of Boston, when arranging for a great memorial service in Tremont Temple, asked me to call on Dr. Oliver Wendel Holmes to ask him to write a poem on Bayard Taylor's death. When I asked Mr. Holmes to write this poem, to be read in the Tremont Temple, he was sitting on the rocking chair. He rocked back and kicked up his feet, and began to laugh. "I write a poem on Bayard Taylor—ah, no—but I tell you, if you will get Mr. Longfellow to write a poem on Bayard Taylor's death, I will read it." These things only show the eccentricities of Mr. Holmes. So I went to Mr. Longfellow and told him what Dr. Holmes had said, and here is the poem he wrote:

"Dead he lay among his books! The peace of God was in his looks. As the statues in the gloom Watch o'er Maximilian's tomb, So those volumes from their shelve. Watched him, silent as themselves. Ah, his hand will never more Turn their storied pages o'er. Never more his lips repeat Songs of theirs, however sweet. Let the lifeless body rest! He is gone who was its guest. Gone as travellers haste to leave An inn, nor tarry until eve.

"Traveller! in what realms afar, In what planet, in what star, In what gardens of delight Rest thy weary feet to-night? Poet, thou whose latest verse Was a garland on thy hearse, Thou hast sung with organ tone In Deukalion's life thine own. On the ruins of the Past Blooms the perfect flower, at last Friend, but yesterday the bells Rang for thee their loud farewells; And to-day they toll for thee, Lying dead beyond the sea; Lying dead among thy books; The peace of God in all thy looks."

That great traveller, like Mr. Longfellow, used to tell me of his first wife. He always said that her sweet spirit occupied that room and stood by him. I often told him that he was wrong and argued with him, but he said, "I know she is here." I often thought of the great inspiration she had been to him in his marvelous poems and books. Poor Bayard Taylor, "In what gardens of delight, rest thy weary feet to-night?" Mr. Longfellow once said that Mary "stood between him and his manuscript," and he could not get away from the impression that she was with him all the time. How sad was her early death and how he suffered the martyrdom of the faithful! Longfellow's home life was always beautiful But his later years were disturbed greatly by souvenir and curiosity seekers.

Horace Greeley died of a broken heart because he was not elected President of the United States, and never was happy in the last years of his life. His idea of true happiness was to go to some quiet retreat and publish some little paper. He once declared at a dinner in Brooklyn that he envied the owner of a weekly paper in Indiana whose paper was so weakly that the subscribers did not miss it if it failed to appear.

Mr. Tennyson told me that he would not exchange his home, walled in as it was like a fortress for Windsor Castle or the throne of the Queen.

Mr. Carnegie said to me only a few months ago that if a man owned his home and had his health he had all the money that man needed to be as happy as any person can be. Mr. Carnegie was right about that.

Empress Eugenie, in 1870, was said to be the happiest woman in France. I saw her in the Tuilleres at a gorgeous banquet and a few years after, when her husband had been captured, her son killed and she was a widow, at the Chislehurst Cottage, I said to her, "The last time I saw you in that beautiful palace you were said to be the happiest woman in the world." "Sir," she said, "I am far happier now than I was then." It was a statement that for a long time I could not understand.

I caught a glimpse of Garibaldi weeping because he did not go back with his wife, Anita, to South America.

I visited Charles Dickens at his home and asked him to come to America again and read from his books, but Mr. Dickens said "No, I will never cross the ocean; I will not go even to London. When I die, I am to be buried out there on the lawn," and he pointed out the place to me. A few weeks later I hired a custodian to let me in early at the rear gate of Westminster Abbey, for Parliament had changed Mr. Dickens's will in one respect, and provided that he should not be buried on the lawn of his cottage, but instead in Westminster Abbey, but they made no other change in his will. There I looked on the fifteen men, all whom the will allowed to be present at his funeral, who were bearing all that was mortal of Charles Dickens to his rest, and I heard Dean Stanley say "While Mr. Dickens lived, his loss was our gain; but now his gain is our loss." When he uttered that great truth, very condensed, in that beautiful language, he showed that human life in the public service of one's fellow men may be nothing more or less than continual sacrifice.

My friends, if you are called to public service; if you have influence that you can use for the public good, do not hesitate to go if you are SURE that DUTY calls you. But if, instead, no voice of God, no call of mankind, doth require that you go out and give up the best of life for your fellows, remember how fortunate you are. If you can go to your home at evening and read your paper in peace, and rest undisturbed, do so, and remember that you have reached the very height of personal happiness. Then seek no farther, count thyself happy and go no farther than God shall call you. For the happiest man is not famous, nor rich, but he who hath his loved ones in an undisturbed peace around. Remember what Wendell Phillips said, "All within this gate is Paradise; all without it is MARTYDROM."

I had a glimpse of Generals Grant and Sheridan wrestling like boys, over a box of cigars sent into General Grant's tent. They were boys again.

I had a glimpse of Li-Hung Chang at Nanking, China, at an execution by beheading, and a glimpse of him an hour later playing leap frog with his grandchildren. Childhood was a joy, manhood a tragedy.

THE END