Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And TriumphsFuller, Osgood E. (Osgood Eaton)
History
Brave Men and Women: Their Struggles, Failures, And Triumphs
Fuller, Osgood E. (Osgood Eaton)
Biography
Barzillai, of sacred history, was a very old man, a very kind man, a
very affectionate man, a very rich man of the tenth century before
Christ, a type of our American philanthropist, Peter Cooper, in the
nineteenth century after Christ. When I see Barzillai, from his wealthy
country seat at Rogelim, coming out to meet David's retreating army, and
providing them with flour and corn and mattresses, it makes me think of
the hearty response of our modern philanthropist in time of trouble and
disaster, whether individual, municipal, or national. The snow of his
white locks has melted from our sight, and the benediction of his genial
face has come to its long amen. But his influence halted not a
half-second for his obsequies to finish, but goes right on without
change, save that of augmentation, for in the great sum of a useful life
death is a multiplication instead of subtraction, and the tombstone,
instead of being the goal of the race, is only the starting point. What
means this rising up of all good men, with hats off, in reverence to one
who never wielded a sword or delivered masterly oration or stood in
senatorial place? Neither general, nor lord, nor governor, nor
President. The LL. D., which a university bestowed, did not stick to
him. The word mister, as a prefix, or the word esquire, as a suffix,
seemed a superfluity. He was, in all Christendom, plain Peter Cooper.
Why, then, all the flags at half-mast, and the resolutions of common
council, and the eulogium of legislatures, and the deep sighs from
multitudes who have no adequate way to express their bereavement?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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