The body, enclosed in a massive casket, upon which rested a wreath of white azaleas and lilies, was borne to the Capitol, followed by a company of three hundred colored men and a long line of carriages. The most noticeable among the floral gifts, says Elias Nason, in his Life of Sumner, "was a broken column of violets and white azaleas, placed there by the hands of a colored girl. She had been rendered lame by being thrust from the cars of a railroad, whose charter Mr. Sumner, after hearing the girl's story, by a resolution, caused to be revoked." From there it was carried to the State House in Boston, and visited by at least fifty thousand people. In the midst of the beautiful floral decorations was a large heart of flowers, from the colored citizens of Boston, with the words, "Charles Sumner, you gave us your life; we give you our hearts." Through a dense crowd the coffin was borne to Mount Auburn cemetery, and placed in the open grave just as the sun was setting, Longfellow, Holmes, Emerson, and other dear friends standing by. The grand old song of Luther was sung, "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott." Strange contrast! the quiet, unknown Harvard law student;--the great senator, doctor of laws, author, and orator. Sumner had his share of sorrow. He lived to see seven of his eight brothers and sisters taken away by death. He who had longed for domestic bliss did not find it. He married, when he was fifty-five, Mrs. Alice Mason Hooper, but the companionship did not prove congenial, and a divorce resulted, by mutual consent. He forgot the heart-hunger of his early years in living for the slaves and the down-trodden, whether white or black. Through all his struggles he kept a sublime hope. He used to say, "All defeats in a good cause are but resting-places on the road to victory at last." He had defeats, as do all, but he won the victory. Well says Hon. James G. Blaine, in his "Twenty Years of Congress," "Mr. Sumner must ever be regarded as a scholar, an orator, a philanthropist, a philosopher, a statesman, whose splendid and unsullied fame will always form part of the true glory of the nation." "He belongs to all of us, in the North and in the South," said Hon. Carl Schurz, in his eulogy delivered in Music Hall, Boston, "to the blacks he helped to make free, and to the whites he strove to make brothers again. On the grave of him whom so many thought to be their enemy, and found to be their friend, let the hands be clasped which so bitterly warred against each other. Upon that grave let the youth of America be taught, by the story of his life, that not only genius, power, and success, but, more than these, patriotic devotion and virtue, make the greatness of the citizen." [Illustration: Signature U. S. Grant] U. S. GRANT. What Longfellow wrote of Charles Sumner may well be applied to Grant:-- "Were a star quenched on high, For ages would its light, Still travelling downward from the sky, Shine on our mortal sight.