This is one of the severest tests to which any man is ever put. It is also one which many fail to meet. It is easier to overcome others than to conquer oneself. Noah proved the hero of the flood, then failed to be sufficiently master of himself to keep sober when he had planted a vineyard. Men sometimes lead conquering armies and then fall victims to their own weaknesses and passions. Yet there is no truer greatness than that which comes from self-mastery. The ruler of his own spirit is greater than the conqueror of a city. The mastery of self may be costly. It was in the case of Jean Valjean. However, it is a necessary step on the upward road. In the next significant scene, we see Jean Valjean, once more at liberty, slipping along a street of Paris holding the hand of a little girl. He has taken under his protection the orphan child of an unfortunate woman who worked in his factory at M. sur M. It has been many years since he has had any one upon whom to lavish his affection. The child receives all the love so long unreleased from his soul. He serves her as a real parent would do, as her mother would do had not grim circumstances robbed her of her life. She shares in his vicissitudes and dangers, but he sees her safely through to a beautiful womanhood. As Father Madeline, mayor of M. sur M., Jean Valjean was a notably good man. Now he becomes a saint. There is no quality of tender-heartedness and no spirit of self-sacrifice which he does not possess. He has attained to the glory of a beautiful old age, an old age made beautiful by the presence within of a noble soul. On the last lap of the journey, he has been led by a little child. If the influence of a child will not call out the tenderness planted in the human constitution, then nothing will. Jean Valjean yields to its influence. He accomplishes the third stage in his redemption when he gives himself away. The human heart must have something to love and something to which to cling. It is never at its best until it does. Much of the divinity planted in these hardened lives of ours is imprisoned until it finds some object of affection to draw it out. The lily of life never comes to the fullness of its bloom until the heart has found someone to love, to toil for, to sacrifice for. Silas Marner found that influence in little Eppie, who came to take the place of his paltry and failing gold. Jean Valjean found it in Cosette. The human tendency is to make self the centre of the universe. It is plain that one can never arrive at his best until he recovers from this tendency. To have the stars and planets revolve about oneself means a small, narrow, constricted, and embittered life. The end is failure and disappointment. One must live for more than self, or he never lives at all. Eulogy for Joseph E. Henley [excerpt] (1924)