A giant in stature, and a lion in strength and courage, he possessed the gentleness of a child and the tenderness of a woman. The sufferings, even of a stranger, would fill his eyes with tears, and the death of a friend would overwhelm him. In his tenth year his mother died, and for a time his heart was desolate and he could not be consoled. In his fifteenth year his only sister, a lovely, fragile flower, just blooming into womanhood, drooped and died, and life seemed purposeless to him again. Of his four children, two died while he was living--Eddie, a fair-haired babe, and his beloved Willie. When death took these his sorrow was unutterable. The untimely death of his young friend, the gallant Colonel Ellsworth, at Alexandria, and the death of his life-long friend, the lamented Edwin F. Baker, at Ball's Bluff, were blows that staggered him. At the death of his good friend, Bowlin Green, he was chosen to deliver a funeral address. When the hour arrived, and he stepped forward to perform the sacred task, his eyes fell upon the coffin of his dead friend and for a time he stood transfixed--helpless and speechless. The only tribute he could pay was the tribute of his tears. When he turned for the last time from the bedside of the beautiful Ann Rut-ledge, his betrothed, it was with a broken heart and a mind dethroned. "Oh! I can never be reconciled to have the snow, the rain, and the storm beat upon her grave," was the pitiful burden of his plaint for weeks. Reason after a time returned, but his wonted gladness never; and down through all those eventful years to that fatal April night when his own sweet life-blood slowly oozed away, beneath that sparkling surface of feigned mirth, drifted the memory and the agonies of that great grief. In the social relations of life, he was a most exemplary man. He was a devoted husband, an indulgent father, an obliging neighbor, and a faithful friend. Mrs. Colonel Chapman, a lady who lived for a time in his family, pays this tribute to his private life: "He was all that a husband, father, and neighbor should be, kind and affectionate to his wife and child, and very pleasant to all around him. Never did I hear him utter an unkind word." "His devotion to wife and children," says George W. Julian, "was as abiding and unbounded as his love of country." The strong attachment always manifested by him for his friends has often been remarked. Rich and poor, great and humble, all were equally dear to him and alike the recipients of his regard and love. The prince he treated like a man, the humblest man he treated like a prince. Nothing in his career exhibits the greatness and nobleness of his character in a loftier degree than the cordial and unaffected manner in which, at Washington, in the midst of wealth, and splendor, and refinement, he was accustomed to receive and entertain the plain, uncultured friends of other days.