A TRIBUTE TO COURTLANDT PALMER.
New York, July 26, 1888.
MY FRIENDS: A thinker of pure thoughts, a speaker of brave words, a doer of generous deeds has reached the silent haven that all the dead have reached, and where the voyage of every life must end; and we, his friends, who even now are hastening after him, are met to do the last kind acts that man may do for man—to tell his virtues and to lay with tenderness and tears lay ashes in the sacred place of rest and peace.
Some one has said, that in the open hands of death we find only what they gave away.
Let us believe that pure thoughts, brave words and generous deeds can never die. Let us believe that they bear fruit and add forever to the well-being of the human race. Let us believe that a noble, self-denying life increases the moral wealth of man, and gives assurance that the future will be grander than the past.
In the monotony of subservience, in the multitude of blind followers, nothing is more inspiring than a free and independent man—one who gives and asks reasons; one who demands freedom and gives what he demands; one who refuses to be slave or master. Such a man was Courtlandt Palmer, to whom we pay the tribute of respect and love.
He was an honest man—he gave the rights he claimed. This was the foundation on which he built. To think for himself—to give his thought to others; this was to him not only a privilege, not only a right, but a duty.
He believed in self-preservation—in personal independence—that is to say, in manhood.