Page:Poems of Nature and Life.djvu/166

 I 3 8 INTR OD UCTION

my esteemed friend, Charles F. Simmons. Geoffrey's ex- clamation, "Vale, vale, O amice, vale in aeternum ! " rings in my ears and weighs upon my spirits. A victim of this dreadful war, after having practised the law just suffi- ciently to gain a support as a bachelor until there was little law to be practised, he joined the regiment of his friend Col. Greene, an educated West Point officer, and went as an adjutant to Virginia. Hard work, exposure and camp fever soon broke him down. Spitting of blood came on, and he left our coast for Cuba last February, and was doubtless lost in the Gulf Stream in the great tem- pest of that month. I have seen him devoting his small means to an edition of his brother's sermons, left to be published as a farewell token to his parishioners, anxiously attentive to every detail and regardless of expense in his labor of love. I have seen him unsparing of time and trouble in securing the comfort of his mother's last years. I have observed with pleasure his critical discernment in judging of a composition, whether of a picture or of a poem. He himself, also, had ability as a draughtsman, and has been for long my guest and companion, and has spent the nights with me in enjoying the collections with which I have surrounded myself.

Thus the procession of our friends passes away in series and disappears. First, your grandfather, who went not unexpectedly, and for whom I did not overestimate my regard, and who was still more to me because he was not mine, and in whose departure Beverly will seem to have lost no little of its attraction. Next went my sister, of whom I said enough in my last ; and now Simmons ; and in a few months, or even weeks, I fear, Mr. Gumming, who does not recover, but thus far declines steadily. Yet, as we begin to die from the moment v/e are born, and

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