There is a special promise made by Christ, to those who enter their closet and shut the door and pray to their Father which is in secret. How often Mr. Charless brought those words to my mind; and as I used to see him coming from home, with such a cheerful, happy face, as I saw how good men and wicked men respected and honored him, I have said to myself over and often: His Father who seeth in secret is rewarding him openly. In truth this passage was so associated with Mr. Charless in my mind, that I do not know that I have read these words for a number of years before his death and since without thinking of him as a striking illustration of its truth and beauty. I need not, in concluding, say much to you of the circumstances that snatched from his family, from you, from the Church and the community, such a man. The record of the whole event you will see in the journals, secular and religious, which your Grandmother has so thoughtfully preserved for you. I remember nothing that occurred in St. Louis, during the fourteen years that I resided there, which produced a more profound impression on the public mind, or so stirred its hot indignation, as the death of Mr. Charless by the hand of the assassin who slew him. Nothing, I believe, but the urgent request of Mr. Charless, from his bed of death, prevented the community from avenging themselves without the forms of law for the dark crime committed. And when, at the request of Mr. Charless, the community spared the life of the felon, there was all the sterner purpose that Justice should be meted out to his crime by the hand of law. And no jury could have been found in the city, who, if they had been so disposed, would have ventured to acquit him on false or frivolous pretexts, such as secured the acquittal of many a culprit.