ver his forehead; signs of physical weakness with determination
not to show it. His valet walked beside him ready to help or direct his
steps. He deprecated any remarks appreciatory of his wonderful services.
He had the appearance of one whose work is completely done, and is
waiting for the time to start homeward. He was in appearance more like
myself than any person I ever saw, and if I should live to be his age
the likeness will be complete.

I did not think then that Mr. Ruskin would ever write another paragraph.
He would continue to saunter along the English lane very slowly, his
valet by his side, for a year or two, and then fold his hands for his
last sleep. Then the whole world would speak words of gratitude and
praise which it had denied him all through the years in which he was
laboriously writing "Modern Painters," "The Seven Lamps of
Architecture," "The Stones of Venice," and "Ethics of the Dust." We
cannot imagine what the world's literature would have been if Thomas
Carlyle and John Ruskin had never entered it. I shall never forget how
in the early years of my ministry I picked up in Wynkoop's store, in
Syracuse, for the first time, one of Ruskin's works. I read that book
under the trees, because it was the best place to read it. Ruskin was
the first great interpreter of the language of leaves, of clouds, of
rivers, of lakes, of seas.

In July, 1892,1 went to Russia. It was summer in the land of snow and
ice, so that we saw it in the glow of sunny days, in the long
gold-tipped twilights of balmy air. In America we still regarded Russia
as a land of cruel mystery and imperial oppression. There was as much
ignorance about the Russians, their Government, their country, as there
was about the Fiji Islands. Americans had been taught that Siberia was
Russia, that Russia and Siberia were the same, one vast infinite waste
of misery and cruelty. Granted that I went to Russia on an errand of
mercy, and as a representative of the most powerful nation in the world,
nevertheless I contend that the Russian people and their Government were
hugely misrepresented. There was no need for the Emperor of Russia to
give audience to so humble a representative as a minister of the Gospel
unless he had been sincerely touched by the evidence of American
generosity and mercy for his starving peasants in Central Russia. His
courtesy and reception of me was a complete contradiction of his
reported arrogance and hard-heartedness. There