rkness would straightway grow radiant before your eyes, and before you
there would appear a hall decked for a feast, with varied tapestries and
garlands of gaiety, joyous and serene as our friend's own life. Then
your eyes, your spirit, would be attracted by the creations of his
luxuriant imagination; Olympus with its gods, introduced by the Muses
and adorned by the Graces, would be a living testimony that he who lived
amid such glad surroundings, and who also departed from us in the spirit
of that gladness, should be counted among the most fortunate of mankind,
and should be interred, not with lamentation, but with expressions of
joy and of exultation.

And yet, what I cannot present to the outward senses, may be offered to
the inward. Eighty years, how much in how few syllables! Who of us dares
hastily to run through so many years and to picture to himself the
significance of them when well employed? Who of us would dare assert
that he could in an instant measure and appraise the value of a life
that was complete from every point of view?

[Illustration: MARTIN WIELAND]

If we accompany our friend step by step through all his days, if we
regard him as a boy and as a youth, in his prime and in his old age, we
find that to his lot fell the unusual fortune of plucking the bloom of
each of these seasons; for even old age has its bloom, and the happiest
enjoyment of this, also, was vouchsafed him. Only a few months have
passed since for him the brethren of our lodge crowned their mysterious
sphinx with roses, to show that, if the aged Anacreon undertook to adorn
his exalted sensuality with the rose's light twigs, the ethical
sensuousness, the tempered joy of life and wit which animated our noble
friend also merited a rich and abundant garland.

Only a few weeks have elapsed since this excellent man was still with
us, not merely present but active at our gatherings. It was through the
midst of our intimate circle that he passed from things earthly; we were
the nearest to him, even at the last; and if his fatherland as well as
foreign nations celebrate his memory, where ought this to be done
earlier and more emphatically than by us?

I have not, therefore, dared to disobey the mandates of our masters, and
before this honorable assembly I speak a few words in his memory, the
more gladly since they may be fleeting precursors of what in the future
the world and our brotherhood shall do for him. This is the sentiment,
and t