EULOGIA.
“My Brethren:—
“‘Dear beauteous death, the jewel of the just,’ has been laid upon the breast of him who was and is in the Mystic Tie your brother and mine; in every sense, the brother of all mankind.
“I have known him longer than the span of most men’s lives, and though our paths have been apart for many years, I have ever been interested to know that his industrious life has been kept unspotted from the world, and that a heart large enough to include all who suffered or were in want, a soul as white as heaven, have ever been the tenants of his earthly habitation. In youth pure and amiable, in vigorous manhood wise, and steady, and just, a serene and bright old age, lovely as a Lapland night, has rounded out the earthly stay of Roger Brathwaite. With him, high-erected thoughts, seated in the heart of courtesy, were ever present. While even in boyhood his thoughts and studies were what are called philosophical, he never sought to help knowledge overthrow faith, weaken hope, or lessen charity. His youth was chaste and uneventful. That future then dawning and which has become of the silent past, was one of opportunities of many kinds for him, favored as he was in health, in mind, in personal appearance, in social position, and in this world’s goods. He could have had a career in which he would have been known and honored of the multitude; but he preferred seclusion and mental improvement to publicity and social advancement. Yet at no time was his retirement so complete as to shut out from him a knowledge of the world’s on-goings and of the sufferings and needs of his fellow-men; never did his absorbing occupations close his ears to the cry of the fatherless, or his purse against the appeal of the widowed and forsaken. He craved knowledge as the poet, the artist, crave fame; yet the rich storehouses of his mind were ever open to the inquiry of any earnest seeker after truth.
“He loved mystery only that he might throw its portals open to the light of day. ‘A gentleman well-bred and of good name,’ honor sat upon him as the sun in the gray vault of heaven. He sought hidden knowledge that he might use it for the good of men, and eventually make it free as the wind. No covert enmity made him a target; he had no foe but death, to whom he has rendered quittance. He died in full puissance of mind and body. The rude imperious surge has carried him from us, but his bright and shining memory remains. Could I but wish him no better than he wished his fellow-men of all degree, I would breathe naught but blessings and good will.
“What the exact import of his life-work, so suddenly, so unfortunately swept away by the rude flood of fire, I know not; no one seems to know. This only we do know, that he culled from every flower of fact some virtuous sweets of knowledge which he laid up for mankind’s good use.
“He leaves no kindred, save that all men are alike his kith and kin. No widow’s tears bedew, no orphan’s sighs bemoan, his honored grave; yet there is no lack of tears or sighs, for strong men full of years must mourn his death, whose life was all so full of tenderness and good.”
On a grassy sun-kissed slope overlooking the beautiful harbor of New York, a massive granite cube bearing his name, and the dates of his birth and death, covers the silent tomb of Roger Brathwaite. Peace to his ashes no less than to his daring spirit, which laid bare the inmost heart of the dead past, and would have wrested its every secret from all time to come.
THE END.