Page:Speeches, correspondence and political papers of Carl Schurz, Volume 5.djvu/357

Rh that their grief is shared? Truly, this consolation flows out to them in the richest streams, for hundreds and thousands are united in this common sorrow as one great family. The memory of this true nobleman will be green and blossoming in all our hearts, and his name will live in our imperishable reverence and affection. 



My dear Carl Schurz: I have just read and handed to my wife and daughter to read, your beautiful and impressive eulogy of William Steinway—so full of just discrimination, honorable alike to the dead man and to the living orator. Nearly twenty-five years ago I crossed the Atlantic in company with Mr. Steinway who attracted me by his strong intelligence and even more by his simple and robust integrity. I remember well his speaking of the award of prizes in the French Exposition, and his fine scorn of the proposals (scarcely veiled) which had been made to him by the officials of the Second Empire to purchase certificates of the excellence of his pianos.

Well might you summon to his bier the rich men of the United States and point to his life as a lesson for the wise use of wealth. Never was a better illustration of the spirit of responsibility, for a recognition of the trust that must accompany the possession of wealth in order to make its possessor safe, or its possession a blessing to the community from which it was gathered, and never, my dear General, was there a time in history nor a country where such a sermon as yours and such a character and life as William Steinway's were more needed than now and in the United States. I trust the seeds he has planted and you have watered will bear a good harvest.

I write this note in obedience to a warm impulse, and my mind goes back to the days when we sat together in the Senate and when you stepped out of the ranks of party and struck the