"_My dear Mr. Field_,--It came to my knowledge last month that the 2d of December was the golden-wedding day of Mrs. Field and yourself. It happened when we were in Paris at the telegraph conference in the month of June that my birthday occurred, aged sixty-six. (Is it not terrible that one should be so old?) But it was also fifty years since I went to sea as a sailor boy, and it was just twenty-five years since we made our first voyage in the _Great Eastern_. "Mr. Charles Burt, who was in Paris representing the Anglo-American Company, was kind enough to get up a dinner in my honor, and I was presented with an illuminated memorial or address. It occurred to me that it would be a pleasing act on our part to get up a similar address upon the occasion of your golden wedding, and no doubt you would have the result yesterday. "Mr. Charles Burt and the staff of the Anglo have cordially done all they could to get as many names as we could recall, but as they are a good deal scattered it has taken more time than we anticipated. Then, oh, how many have passed away! It is like calling the roll after a battle--so few could be found. We are to-day trying to get at a few more, who we feel sure would like to add their names. I was looking up Sir William Drake, but he was too ill, and died this morning.... "Now, my dear Mr. Field, let me once more wish Mrs. Field and yourself every sort of kind good wish. The days and years are rolling away, and we may well cling to the memory of exciting and active days when we were twenty-five to thirty years younger and the future filled with nervous uncertainties. "Always yours sincerely, "JAMES ANDERSON." "In the glow of the morning was the song of rejoicing, Ye twain are now one till death shall you part; In the calm of the evening is the song of thanksgiving, Ye twain are still one in life and in heart. "It was faith in the morning, it is knowledge this evening, We sang of the future, we sing of the past; But this jubilee hour finds the refrain unchanging, We twain are still one, only one at the last. "We wait in the evening for the dawn of the morrow, But the song of our lives will not end with the day; 'Midst the music celestial hear the anthem of glory-- We twain are still one, for ever and aye." D. J. B. CHAPTER XVI LAST DAYS AND DEATH--IN MEMORIAM (1891-1892) The golden wedding was to be almost the last gleam of brightness and happiness that came to the home of Mr. Field. It was in March, 1890, that his children had been told that any sudden excitement might end his life, and in April, 1891, they realized that their mother's illness must soon come to a fatal termination. Both father and mother were watched with eager solicitude throughout the summer of 1891.