Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 3.djvu/96

70 proudest New Englander; and yet he was the most cosmopolitan American I have ever seen. There was in him not the faintest shadow of that narrow prejudice which looks askance at what has grown in foreign lands. His generous heart and his enlightened mind were too generous and too enlightened not to give the fullest measure of appreciation to all that was good and worthy, from whatever quarter of the globe it came.

And now his home! There are those around me who have breathed the air of his house in Washington, that atmosphere of refinement, taste, scholarship, art, friendship and warm-hearted hospitality; who have seen those rooms covered and filled with his pictures, his engravings, his statues, his bronzes, his books and rare manuscripts—the collections of a lifetime—the image of the richness of his mind, the comfort and consolation of his solitude. They have beheld his childlike smile of satisfaction when he unlocked the most precious of his treasures and told their stories.

They remember the conversations at his hospitable board, genially inspired and directed by him, on art and books and inventions and great times and great men,—when suddenly sometimes, by accident, a new mine of curious knowledge disclosed itself in him, which his friends had never known he possessed; or when a sunburst of the affectionate gentleness of his soul warmed all hearts around him. They remember his craving for friendship, as it spoke through the far outstretched hand when you arrived, and the glad exclamation, “I am so happy you came,”—and the beseeching, almost despondent tone when you departed: “Do not leave me yet; do stay a while longer, I want so much to speak with you!”—It is all gone now. He could not stay himself, and he has left his friends behind, feeling more deeply than ever that no man could know him well but to love him.