ens in the
blood and dust of battle, remember that to him the dust is thicker and
the battle fiercer. No wonder the wanderers fall! No wonder we point
to thief and murderer, and haunting prostitute, and the never-ending
throng of unhearsed dead! The Valley of the Shadow of Death gives few
of its pilgrims back to the world.

But Alexander Crummell it gave back. Out of the temptation of Hate,
and burned by the fire of Despair, triumphant over Doubt, and steeled
by Sacrifice against Humiliation, he turned at last home across the
waters, humble and strong, gentle and determined. He bent to all the
gibes and prejudices, to all hatred and discrimination, with that rare
courtesy which is the armor of pure souls. He fought among his own,
the low, the grasping, and the wicked, with that unbending
righteousness which is the sword of the just. He never faltered, he
seldom complained; he simply worked, inspiring the young, rebuking the
old, helping the weak, guiding the strong.

So he grew, and brought within his wide influence all that was best of
those who walk within the Veil. They who live without knew not nor
dreamed of that full power within, that mighty inspiration which the
dull gauze of caste decreed that most men should not know. And now
that he is gone, I sweep the Veil away and cry, Lo! the soul to whose
dear memory I bring this little tribute. I can see his face still,
dark and heavy-lined beneath his snowy hair; lighting and shading, now
with inspiration for the future, now in innocent pain at some human
wickedness, now with sorrow at some hard memory from the past. The
more I met Alexander Crummell, the more I felt how much that world was
losing which knew so little of him. In another age he might have sat
among the elders of the land in purple-bordered toga; in another
country mothers might have sung him to the cradles.

He did his work,--he did it nobly and well; and yet I sorrow that here
he worked alone, with so little human sympathy. His name to-day, in
this broad land, means little, and comes to fifty million ears laden
with no incense of memory or emulation. And herein lies the tragedy of
the age: not that men are poor,--all men know something of poverty; not
that men are wicked,--who is good? not that men are ignorant,--what is
Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

He sat one morning gazing toward the sea. He smiled and said, "The
gate is rusty on the hinges." That night at s