"The construction of the great canal across the isthmus of Panama will bind them closer to us, and at the same time will almost double our strength as a naval power.
"Too much credit cannot be given to President Roosevelt for the great and wonderful results which he has accomplished in the interest of the country, but the legislative branch of the Government has done its full share.
"The record made during the last session of Congress in the enactment of wise laws for the direct benefit of the people has not been equalled since the Civil War—if at all, since the adoption of the Constitution.
"I will not detain the caucus longer than to repeat my sincere obligations to you and to express through you my thanks to the people of the State, whose representatives you are, for the signal honor that has been conferred upon me."
CHAPTER XXXIV CONCLUSION
Generally I might say that I am quite content; but as I sit down now in the evening time of my life, it is a source of sadness and wonder to me that I have survived both my wives and all of my children. One by one I have laid them away in beautiful Oak Ridge Cemetery, in Springfield, where I myself will one day be laid beside them. I have had a delightful home life; no man could have had a more happy and peaceful one. As I look back now, I cannot remember that either wife or children ever caused me one moment's pain. I was twice married. My first wife, Hannah M. Fisher, to whom I was married in 1855, and who died in 1861, was of a very amiable spirit, a woman of more than ordinary culture, and was the mother of my first two children, Mrs. Ridgely and Mrs. Hardie, who lived to womanhood, but both of whom have passed away. My second wife, Julia Fisher, was the sister of my first wife. No better or truer woman ever lived. She was a devoted helpmate to me during all the years that I have occupied high public office and needed the support and help of a woman. She did her full part and filled her place on every occasion with dignity and propriety. It seems that her death is the last great sorrow I shall have to bear.
The memory of the children whom I lost in their infancy is naturally dimmed by the passage of time, but it is hard for me to understand the justice of things when I remember the death of my two daughters, Ella, wife of William Barret Ridgely, and Carrie, wife of Robert Gordon Hardie, who were taken just in the very prime of womanhood, just in the most beautiful period of a woman's life, and just at a time when they had the most to live for.
As I think of it now, I do not know where I obtained the strength to survive all these sorrows. I have no great fear of death, except the natural dread of the physical pain which usually accompanies it. I certainly wish beyond any words I have power to express that I could have greater assurance that there will be a reuniting with those we love and those who have loved us in some future world; but from my reading of Scripture, and even admitting that there is a hereafter, I cannot find any satisfactory evidence to warrant such a belief. Could I believe that I should meet the loved ones who have gone before, I do not know but that I should look forward with pleasure to the "passing across." Not having this belief, I am quite content to stay where I am as long as I can; and finally, when old Charon appears to row me over the river Styx, I shall be ready to go.
INDEX [omitted]
End of Project Gutenberg's Fifty Years of Public Service, by Shelby M. Cullom