"He has ever been a prophet of good hope and a preacher of good cheer. When you have listened to one of his sermons, you have listened to an evangel, to good tidings. He has never stood aloof from the great battles for righteousness or justice. When men were engaged in the struggle to elevate the race for the good of their fellow men, no word of discouragement has ever come from his lips. He has recalled no memory of old failure in the past. He has never been found outside the ranks railing at or criticising the men who were doing the best work, or were doing the best work they knew how to do. He has never been afraid to tackle the evils that other men think hopeless. He has uttered his brave challenge to foemen worthy of his steel. Poverty and war and crime and sorrow are the enemies with whom he has striven.
"I do not know another living man who has exercised a more powerful influence on the practical life of his generation. He has taught us the truth, very simple, but somehow nobody ever got hold of it till he did, that virtue and brave living, and helping other men, can be made to grow by geometrical progression. I am told that Dr. Hale has more correspondents in Asia than the London Times. I cannot tell how many persons are enrolled in the clubs of which he was the founder and inspirer.
"But I am disqualified to do justice to the theme you have assigned to me. For an impartial verdict you must get an impartial juryman. You will have to find somebody that loves him less than I do. You cannot find anybody who loves him more. To me he has been a friend and father and brother and counsellor and companion and leader and instructor; prophet of good hope, teacher of good cheer. His figure mingles with my household life, and with the life of my country. I can hardly imagine either without him. He has pictured for us the infinite desolation of the man without a country. But when his time shall come, what will be the desolation of the country without the man?
"And now what can we give you who have given us so much? We have something to give you on our side. We bring you a more costly and precious gift than any jewel or diadem, though it came from an Emperor's treasury.
Love is a present for a mighty King.
"We bring you the heart's love of Boston where you were born, and Worcester where you took the early vows you have kept so well; of Massachusetts who knows she has no worthier son, and of the great and free country to whom you have taught new lessons of patriotism, and whom you have served in a thousand ways.
"This prophet is honored in his own country. There will be a place found for him somewhere in the House of many Mansions. I do not know what will be the employment of our dear friend in the world whose messages he has been bringing to us so long. But I like to think he will be sent on some errands like that of the presence which came to Ben Adhem with a great wakening light, rich and like a lily in bloom, to tell him that the name of him who loved his fellow men led all the names of those the love of God had blessed."
APPENDIX THE FOREST OF DEAN BY JOHN BELLOWS
The Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, is one of the very few primeval Forests of Britain that have survived to this century. It has just been my privilege to accompany Senator Hoar on a drive through a portion of it, and he has asked me to write a few notes on this visit, for the American Antiquarian Society, in the hope that others of its members may share in the interest he has taken in its archaeology.
I am indebted for many years' acquaintance with George F. Hoar, through Oliver Wendell Holmes, to the circumstance that the Hoar family lived in Gloucester from the time of the Tudors, if not earlier; and this has led him to pay repeated visits to our old city, with the object of tracing the history of his forefathers. In doing this he has been very successful; and only within the last few months my friend H. Y. J. Taylor, who is an untiring searcher of our old records, has come upon an item in the expenses of the Mayor and Burgesses, of a payment to Charles Hoar, in the year 1588, for keeping a horse ready to carry to Cirencester the tidings of the arrival of the Spanish Armada. And Charles Hoar's house is with us to this day, quaintly gabled, and with over-hanging timber-framed stories, such as the Romans built here in the first century. It stands in Longsmith Street, just above the spot where forty years ago I looked down on a beautiful tessellated pavement of, perhaps, the time of Valentinian. It was eight feet below the present surface; for Gloucester, like Rome, has been a rising city.