Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/216

 170 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS ing. After a short illness, at ten minutes past eleven o clock, on Sunday evening, March 8, Mil- lard Fillmore &quot;Gave his honors to the world again, His blessed part to heaven, and slept in peace.&quot; He was gathered to his fathers at the ripe age of seventy-four years, and passed away without the knowledge that his former partner, Judge Hall, with whom he had been so long and so closely united in the bonds of friendship, as well as in professional and political life, had also, a few days previous, rested from his labors, and was then ly ing in the Forest Lawn cemetery, where the ex- president now sleeps by his side. A phenomenal instance of literary vandalism oc curred in the city of Buffalo, early in 1891, when all the valuable letters and documents relating to the administration of Millard Fillmore were de stroyed by the executor of the ex-president s only son, Millard Powers Fillmore (he died November 15, 1889), whose will contained a mandate to that effect. Why he should have wished in this way to destroy an important part of the history of his country, as well as of his father s honorable career, or why any intelligent lawyer should have con signed to the flames thousands of papers by Web ster and other illustrious men without at least causing copies of the most valuable of them to be made, is entirely beyond the comprehension of