."

So now at last we have come to that high and lonely place, where we may
look back upon the toilsome, adventurous way we have traveled with the
aid of the candle and the compass. Now let us stop a moment to rest and
to think. How sweet the air is here! The night is falling. I see the
stars in the sky. Just below me is the valley of Eternal Silence. You
will understand my haste now. I have sought only to do justice to my
friend and to give my country a name, long neglected, but equal in glory
to those of Washington and Lincoln.

Come, let us take one last look together down the road we have traveled,
now dim in the evening shadows. Scattered along it are the little houses
of the poor of which I have written. See the lights in the windows--the
lights that are shining into the souls of the young--the eager, open,
expectant, welcoming souls of the young!--and the light carries many
things, but best of all a respect for the old, unchanging way of the
compass. After all that is the end and aim of the whole matter--believe
me.

My life has lengthened into these days when most of our tasks are
accomplished by machinery. We try to make men by the thousand, in vast
educational machines, and no longer by the one as of old. It was the
loving, forgiving, forbearing, patient, ceaseless toil of mother and
father on the tender soul of childhood, which quickened that
inextinguishable sense of responsibility to God and man in these people
whom I now leave to the judgment of my countrymen.

I have lived to see the ancient plan of kingcraft, for self-protection,
coming back into the world. It demands that the will and conscience of
every individual shall be regulated and controlled by some conceited
prince, backed by an army. It can not fail, I foresee, to accomplish
such devastation in the human spirit as shall imperil the dearest
possession of man.

If one is to follow the compass he can have but one king--his God.

* * * * *

I am near the end. I rode back to Baltimore that forenoon. They had
nominated Mr. Polk, of Tennessee, for president and Silas Wright for
vice-president, the latter by acclamation. I knew that Wright would
decline the honor, as he did.

I hurried northward to keep my appointment with Sally. The boats were
slowed by fog. At Albany I was a day behind my schedule. I should have
only an hour's leeway if the boats on the upper lakes and the stage from
Plattsburg were on time. I