“How do you like the statue?” he was asked.
“It’s fine, but isn’t quite Phillips Brooks. It’s a strong face like his, but I sort of miss the light in the eyes. It isn’t as kind-looking as Phillips Brooks.”
“You knew him, then?”
“Yes, I knew him well. I have talked with him many times. He always spoke to me on the street. He used to always ask about the wife and baby, and now—the wife has gone on beyond, too.”
He took a last look at the statue and then hurried away, for it was almost one o’clock. Just then a colored man of about forty joined the group.
“Know him? Why, I knew him as well as I know my wife. I used to be charman of a house just a few doors away from his on Clarendon Street. He always said, ‘Good-morning, John,’ to me when he met me, as he was going over to the church in the morning. Of course, when I knew him he was older than the statue shows him. He never spoke to you like he was saying, ‘I’m the rich Mr. Brooks.’ He treated you just like you was as good as him.”
Two messenger-boys stopt for a moment. “Who’s that man?” one asked the other.
“Why, that’s a great preacher that used to preach in that church. They say he was an awfully good man. They say he could preach like anything, and yet he was just as common with folks as anybody.”
An intelligent, rather elderly Hebrew was criticizing the statue very severely to several people, but he said: “I used to go to school with him. He was certainly a wonderful preacher and a very, very good man. He surely deserved the best statue Boston could ever put up for him. But I dislike the background and the other figure in this very much.”
(1303)