'Tis there, he says, I am to dwell
With Jesus in the realms of day;
There I shall bid my cares farewell
And He will wipe my tears away.
He knew about all the cheerful tunes that were ever printed in old "New Brunswick Collection," and the "Shunway," and the sweetest melodies that Thomas Hastings ever composed. He took the pitch of sacred song on Sabbath morning, and kept it through all the week.
My father was the only person whom I ever knew without any element of fear. I do not believe he understood the sensation.
Seated in a waggon one day during a runaway that every moment threatened our demolition, he was perfectly calm. He turned around to me, a boy of seven years, and said, "DeWitt, what are you crying about? I guess we can ride as fast as they can run."
There was one scene I remember, that showed his poise and courage as nothing else could. He was Sheriff of Somerset County, N.J., and we lived in the court house, attached to which was the County Jail. During my father's absence one day a prisoner got playing the maniac, dashing things to pieces, vociferating horribly, and flourishing a knife with which he had threatened to carve any one who came near the wicket of his prison, Constables were called in to quell this real or dramatised maniac, but they fell back in terror from the door of the prison. Their show of firearms made no impression upon the demented wretch. After awhile my father returned and was told of the trouble, and indeed he heard it before he reached home. The whole family implored him not to go near the man who was cursing, and armed with a knife. But father could not be deterred. He did not stand outside the door and at a safe distance, but took the key and opened the door, and without any weapon of defence came upon the man, thundering at him, "Sit down and give me that knife!" The tragedy was ended. I never remember to have heard him make a gloomy remark. This was not because he had no perception of the pollutions of society. I once said to my father, "Are people so much worse now than they used to-be?" He made no answer for a minute, for the old people do not like to confess much to the boys. But after awhile his eye twinkled and he said: "Well, DeWitt, the fact is that people were never any better than they ought to be."
Ours was an industrious home. I was brought up to regard laziness as an abominable disease. Though we were some years of age before we heard the trill of a piano, we knew well all about the song of "The Spinning-Wheel."
Through how many thrilling scenes my father had passed! He stood, at Morristown, in the choir that chanted when George Washington was buried; talked with young men whose fathers he had held on his knee; watched the progress of John Adams's administration; denounced, at the time, Aaron Burr's infamy; heard the guns that celebrated the New Orleans victory; voted against Jackson, but lived long enough to wish we had another just like him; remembered when the first steamer struck the North river with its wheel-buckets; was startled by the birth of telegraphy; saw the United States grow from a speck on the world's map till all nations dip their flag at our passing merchantmen. He was born while the Revolutionary cannon were coming home from Yorktown, and lived to hear the tramp of troops returning from the war of the great Rebellion. He lived to speak the names of eighty children, grand-children and great-grand-children. He died just three years from the day when my mother sped on.
When my father lay dying the old country minister said to him, "Mr. Talmage, how do you feel now as you are about to pass the Jordan of death?" He replied—and it was the last thing he ever said—"I feel well; I feel very well; all is well"—lifting his hand in a benediction, a speechless benediction, which I pray God may go down through all the generations—"It is well!"
Four of his sons became ministers of the Gospel: Reverend James R. Talmage, D.D., who was preaching before I was born, and who died in 1879; Reverend John Van Nest Talmage, D.D., who spent his life as a missionary in China, and died in the summer of 1892; Reverend Goyn Talmage, D.D., who after doing a great work for God, died in 1891. But all my brothers and sisters were decidedly Christian, lived usefully and died peacefully.
I rejoice to remember that though my father lived in a plain house the most of his days, he died in a mansion provided by the filial piety of his son who had achieved a fortune.