Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, April 1885Various
General
Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature, Science, and Art, April 1885
Various
American literature -- Periodicals; Literature -- Periodicals
The hand of death has been heavy on us both abroad and at home. The
past year has carried off to their immortal life two of the original
disciples and friends of our master, Auguste Hadery and Fabien
Magnin. Both have been most amply honored in funeral sermons by M.
Laffitte. Fabien Magnin was one of those rare men who represent to the
present the type that we look for in the future. A workman (he was
an engine-pattern maker,) he chose to live and die a workman, proud
of his order, and confident in its destinies; all through his long
life without fortune, or luxury, or ambition; a highly-trained man of
science; a thoroughly trained politician, loyal unshakenly to his great
teacher and his successor; of all the men I have ever known the most
perfect type of the cultivated, incorruptible, simple, courageous man
of the people. With his personal influence over his fellow-workmen,
and from the ascendency of his intellect and character, he might
easily in France have forced his way into the foremost place. With his
scientific resources, and his faculty both for writing and speech, he
might easily have entered the literary or scientific class. With his
energy, prudence, and mechanical skill, he might easily have amassed
a fortune. The attractions of such careers never seemed to touch by a
ripple the serene surface of his austere purity. He chose to live and
die in the strictest simplicity—the type of an honest and educated
citizen, who served to make us feel all that the future has to promise
to the workman, when remaining a workman, devoted to his craft and to
his order, he shall be as highly educated as the best of us to-day; as
courteous and dignified as the most refined; as simple as the ideal
village pastor; as ardent a Republican as the Ferrys and Gambettas
whose names fill the journals.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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