For Sparta’s bravest son;
No truer soldier sleeps beneath
The mould of Marathon.
Edward Everett Hale said, in part:
You ask for his epitaph. It is a very simple epitaph. He found idiots chattering, taunted, and ridiculed by each village fool, and he left them cheerful and happy. He found the insane shut up in their wretched cells, miserable, starving, cold, and dying, and he left them happy, hopeful, and brave. He found the blind sitting in darkness and he left them glad in the sunshine of the love of God.
The simplest tribute of all came from the poor children to whose minds he had brought light.
“They say Doctor Howe will take care of the blind in heaven. Won’t he take care of us, too?”
On receiving my mother’s Memoir of her husband, Florence Nightingale wrote as follows:
London, June 7, ’77.
Dear Mrs. Howe,—It is like a breath from Heaven to one’s overworked and well-nigh overwhelmed mind, your Memoir of one of the best and greatest men of our age, and your remembrance.