Page:An Epistle to Posterity.djvu/29

6 reserved father. As a man of genius is unlike his race and is often misunderstood, my father was misunderstood, and I fear he became unhappy and disappointed. His political idol was Mr. Webster, and when Mr. Webster made the 7th-of-March speech my father's political heart broke.

A good patriot and a fine, unselfish character, always ready to work for any good cause. General James Wilson lived to be eighty-four years old, and died in the house where he had made us all so happy. The State offered him a public funeral, for who had served it so well? The town of Keene, where he was loved and honored, suspended business, as the soldiers of his own "Keene Light Infantry" escorted him to his last home. It was a beautiful day in May, and Monadnock, his neighboring giant, looked down upon him in a full-dress uniform of blue and gold. The children of the public schools stood in line as he was carried along. In the church his much-loved pastor said: "To whom are these great honors paid? To the silver-tongued orator, to the soldier, to the learned lawyer, to the politician? No, to the man of heart;" and that he was.

As I looked my last on his peaceful face I noticed that his black curls were scarcely streaked with gray. They lay in still infantile luxuriance as he had always worn them around his massive brow. The strange contradiction, which had pervaded his nature — the child and the giant — it was all there — noble, lovable, and youthful to the last.

My mother, a beautiful and quiet person, was the antipodes of her husband. Hers was a soul made for renunciation, and the Puritan element was strong in her. She never allowed herself to lavish caresses upon her children, but she was their faithful friend in illness, and