But the work of Elbert and Alice Hubbard is not done. With them one task was scarcely under way when another was launched. Whether complete or incomplete, there had to be an end to their effort sometime, and this is the end.
Often Elbert Hubbard would tell the story of Tolstoy, who stopped at the fence to question the worker in the field, "My Man, if you knew you were to die tomorrow, what would you do today?" And the worker begrimed with sweat would answer, "I would plow!"
That's the way Elbert Hubbard lived and died, and yet he did more—he planned for the future. He planned the future of the Roycroft Shop. Death did not meet him as a stranger. He came as a sometime-expected friend. Father was not unprepared.
The plan that would have sustained us the seven weeks he was in Europe will sustain us seven years—and another seven years.
Elbert Hubbard's work will go on.
I know of no Memorial that would please Elbert Hubbard half so well as to broaden out the Roycroft Idea.
So we will continue to make handmade Furniture, hand-hammered Copper, Modeled Leather. We shall still triumph in the arts of Printing and Bookmaking.
The Roycroft Inn will continue to swing wide its welcoming door, and the kind greeting is always here for you.
"The Fra" will not miss an issue, and you who have enjoyed it in the past will continue to enjoy it!
"The Philistine" belonged to Elbert Hubbard. He wrote it himself for just twenty years and one month. No one else could have done it as he did. No one else can now do it as he did.