He also visited Mexico, Egypt, and the Shetland Islands, and was everywhere an interested observer of men and manners. CHAPTER XII HONORS TO THE GREAT POET We have seen that Bryant was not only a great poet, but a great newspaper editor, an eloquent orator, and a rich man. So he came to be a noted public character, one of the leading citizens of the great city of New York. From this time forward until his death in extreme old age, prominent statesmen, politicians, poets, people of society, hastened to shower honors upon him. He was asked to be a regent of the University of New York, but declined. Banquets were also tendered him, which he also declined. But on his seventieth birthday, November 3, 1864, the Century Club of New York, of which he had been one of the founders, resolved to make a great festival in his honor. Bancroft, the historian, was president of the club, and greeted Bryant with a graceful speech on that great occasion. In Bryant’s reply is the following passage, which will be of interest to all young people as showing that this great and wise man believed in placing responsibility on the young, and not in keeping them in the background for wise old heads. “Much has been said of the wisdom of Old Age,” said he. “Old Age is wise, I grant, for itself, but not wise for the community. It is wise in declining new enterprises, for it has not the power nor the time to execute them; wise in shirking from difficulty, for it has not the strength to overcome it; wise in avoiding danger, for it lacks the faculty of ready and swift action, by which dangers are parried and converted into advantages. But this is not wisdom for mankind at large, by whom new enterprises must be undertaken, dangers met, and difficulties surmounted. What a world this would be if it were made up of old men!” Oliver Wendell Holmes was there, and read a beautiful poem composed for the occasion. There were also other poems read by their authors, and Whittier and Lowell, who could not be there, sent their poems to be read, while Longfellow and a great many other famous people wrote letters of congratulation. Here are some of the beautiful lines from the poem which Dr. Holmes read: How can we praise the verse whose music flows With solemn cadence and majestic close, Pure as the dew that filters through the rose? How shall we thank him that in evil days He faltered never,—nor for blame nor praise, Nor hire nor party, shared his earlier days? But as his boyhood was of manliest hue, So to his youth his manly years were true, All dyed in royal purple through and through. Ralph Waldo Emerson was there, and made a speech, which he closed with this verse, written by the poet Crabbe: True bard, and simple as the race Of heaven-born poets always are, When stooping from their starry place They’re children near but gods afar.