funeral, not as a minister but as a man.
He has been my friend for forty years; he will know what I mean."

The Scotch Preacher did not say much. Why should he? Everyone there
_knew_: and speech would only have cheapened what we knew. And I do not
now recall even the little he said, for there was so much all about me
that spoke not of the death of a good man, but of his life. A boy who
stood near me--a boy no longer, for he was as tall as a man--gave a more
eloquent tribute than any preacher could have done. I saw him stand his
ground for a time with that grim courage of youth which dreads emotion
more than a battle: and then I saw him crying behind a tree! He was not
a relative of the old doctor's; he was only one of many into whose deep
life the doctor had entered.

They sang "Lead, Kindly Light," and came out through the narrow doorway
into the sunshine with the coffin, the hats of the pallbearers in a row
on top, and there was hardly a dry eye among us.

And as they came out through the narrow doorway, I thought how the
Doctor must have looked out daily through so many, many years upon this
beauty of hills and fields and of sky above, grown dearer from long
familiarity--which he would know no more. And Kate North, the Doctor's
sister, his only relative, followed behind, her fine old face gray and
set, but without a tear in her eye. How like the Doctor she looked: the
same stern control!

In the hours which followed, on the pleasant winding way to the
cemetery, in the groups under the trees, on the way homeward again, the
community spoke its true heart, and I have come back with the feeling
that human nature, at bottom, is sound and sweet. I knew a great deal
before about Doctor North, but I knew it as knowledge, not as emotion,
and therefore it was not really a part of my life.

I heard again the stories of how he drove the country roads, winter and
summer, how he had seen most of the population into the world and had
held the hands of many who went out! It was the plain, hard life of a
country doctor, and yet it seemed to rise in our community like some
great tree, its roots deep buried in the soil of our common life, its
branches close to the sky. To those accustomed to the outward
excitements of city life it would have seemed barren and uneventful. It
was significant that the talk was not so much of what the Doctor did as
of _how_ he did it, not so much of his actions as of the natural
expression of his cha