wner well or ill the gentle reader will judge. I
hope I have not obtruded myself unduly, and that I may be pardoned as
I close, if I am for a moment personal. My eyes have given me notice
that they have done work enough and I do not blame them for insisting
upon rest. As to organs in general I have scarcely known that I had
any. They have maintained such peace among themselves, and been so
quiet and deferential as they have performed their functions that I
have taken no note of them, having rarely experienced serious illness.
Had Aesop possessed my anatomy, he would have had small data for
inditing his fable as to the discord between the "Members" and their
commissariat, and the long generations might have lacked that famous
incentive to harmony and co-operation. I venture to say this in
explanation of my stubborn optimism, which is due much less to any
tranquil philosophy I may have imbibed than to my inveterate eupepsia.
My optimism has not decreased as I have grown old, and I record here
as the last word, my faith that the world grows better. I recall with
vividness nineteen Presidential campaigns, and believe that in no one
has the outlook been so hopeful as now. Never have the leaders at the
fore in all parties been more able and high-minded. I have purposed
in this book to speak of the dead and not the living. Were it in
place for me to speak of men who are still strivers, I could give good
reason, derived from personal touch, for the faith I put in men whose
names now resound. However the nation moves, strong and good hands
will receive it, and it will survive and make its way. Agitation,
the meeting of crises, the anxious application of expedients to
threatening dangers,--these we are in the midst of, we always have
been and always shall be. Turmoil is a condition of life, beneficently
so, for through turmoil comes the education that leads man on and up.
We encounter shocks that will seem seismic. But it will only be the
settling of society to firmer bases of justice. In our confusions
England is our fellow, but a better world is shaping there, though
in the earthquake crash of old strata so much seems to totter. And
farther east in France, Germany, and Russia are better things, and
signs of still better. Levant and Orient rock with violence, but they
are rocking to happier and humaner order. What greater miracle than
the coming to the front among nations of Japan! Will her people
perhaps distance their western t