Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 27.djvu/369

 Judge William Brockenbrough. 861

of the dying, a helpless woman's cry, and the orphan's wail; these are the antiphone to each song in his praise; these, and these alone, shall he his requiem.

Shall sculptured marble or graven brass, or the limner's art as here displayed, preserve man from the yawning chasm of dark oblivion?

"There is an ancient land, across the sea, Whence came a traveller telling he had seen Two vast and trunkless legs stand in the desert ; Near by, half buried in the sand, a head,

So marred he doubted what it had been ; The body, deep beyond his ken, or bore away, Built into some old wall Ruin's predestined prey. The feet stood on a pedestal whereon these words were writ :

' My name is Ozymandias, king of kings, Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair ! '

Nothing beside remained. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretched far away"

Not by might nor by power, nor yet by the trumpet of fame, not through wide-reaching opportunity, nor great deed done on a world wide stage not so is an enduring record made; but by a noble life faithfully lived in daily practice of our poor human share of those virtues which combining, even as the colors of the spectrum, form that pure light which is the light of the world. By such a life as is here exemplified, my friends, so shall a noble ancestry be duly hon- ored; so shall the reverence of contemporaries encircle the hoary head; so shall the generations grow nobler and better because a man has lived.

The life but needs to wear, as this one did, the forehead-mark of high purpose and heaven born inspiration ; but needs to stand for some noble, some enduring quality.

The smallest good is a part of the great sum of all good. No need to "uplift the millions." "He who has done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, has done it unto me."

The lightest chord if in true unison with the music, goes to make the great swelling anthem that lifts man's heart toward the creator.

The tinkle of the widow's mite, as it fell into the treasury, gave the key-note to the sacrificial song of the ages: and after two thous- and years, ' the nameless widow ' means for us, All for God.

Wheresoever the gospel of faith and love has been and shall be preached, a little deed that a woman did has been and "shall be