When he died in January, 1876, beautiful tributes were paid to his memory by all sorts and conditions of men—from the Governor and Legislature down to the feeble-minded children whom he had brought into the human fold. A great memorial meeting was held in his honor, where Laura Bridgman, with her pale, sorrow-stricken face, was “the silent orator of the occasion.” Her health was seriously affected by my father’s death, as was also that of sister Julia. Footnote 11: Sister Laura and I. From the poem of Oliver Wendell Holmes, I quote a few verses: How long the wreck-strewn journey seems To reach the far-off past That woke his youth from peaceful dreams With Freedom’s trumpet-blast! Along her classic hillsides rung The Paynims’ battle-cry, And like a red-cross knight he sprung For her to live or die. No trustier service claimed the wreath For Sparta’s bravest son; No truer soldier sleeps beneath The mould of Marathon. Edward Everett Hale said, in part: You ask for his epitaph. It is a very simple epitaph. He found idiots chattering, taunted, and ridiculed by each village fool, and he left them cheerful and happy. He found the insane shut up in their wretched cells, miserable, starving, cold, and dying, and he left them happy, hopeful, and brave. He found the blind sitting in darkness and he left them glad in the sunshine of the love of God. The simplest tribute of all came from the poor children to whose minds he had brought light. “They say Doctor Howe will take care of the blind in heaven. Won’t he take care of us, too?” On receiving my mother’s Memoir of her husband, Florence Nightingale wrote as follows: LONDON, _June 7, ’77_. DEAR MRS. HOWE,—It is like a breath from Heaven to one’s overworked and well-nigh overwhelmed mind, your Memoir of one of the best and greatest men of our age, and your remembrance. You have shown his many-sided life as known to few. You have shown in him a rarer and more fruitful man than even we, who had known and loved him for so long, knew. What has been a revealing to us of him will be even more so for the crowd of your readers who knew him but by the dramatic Greek life: and by his work among the blind, deaf mutes and idiots. No one will know him quite till after you have been read. That is the privilege of your community with him—with his unconsciously heroic life. A great duty has been fulfilled in making known his sympathy for every kind of misfortune,—his love of helping humanity, so to speak, ancient and modern,—his generous and persevering devotion to right,—his noble horror of helpless pity,—his indomitable faith in progress; thanks to you.