The good are the noble. His life filled the lives of others with sunshine. He has left a legacy of glory to his children. They can truthfully say that within their veins is right royal blood--the blood of an honest, generous man, of a steadfast friend, of one who was true to the very gates of death. If there be another world, another life beyond the shore of this,--if the great and good who died upon this orb are there,--then the noblest and the best, with eager hands, have welcomed him--the equal in honor, in generosity, of any one that ever passed beyond the veil. To me this world is growing poor. New friends can never fill the places of the old. Farewell! If this is the end, then you have left to us the sacred memory of a noble life. If this is not the end, there is no world in which you, my friend, will not be loved and welcomed. Farewell! A TRIBUTE TO COURTLANDT PALMER. New York, July 26, 1888. MY FRIENDS: A thinker of pure thoughts, a speaker of brave words, a doer of generous deeds has reached the silent haven that all the dead have reached, and where the voyage of every life must end; and we, his friends, who even now are hastening after him, are met to do the last kind acts that man may do for man--to tell his virtues and to lay with tenderness and tears lay ashes in the sacred place of rest and peace. Some one has said, that in the open hands of death we find only what they gave away. Let us believe that pure thoughts, brave words and generous deeds can never die. Let us believe that they bear fruit and add forever to the well-being of the human race. Let us believe that a noble, self-denying life increases the moral wealth of man, and gives assurance that the future will be grander than the past. In the monotony of subservience, in the multitude of blind followers, nothing is more inspiring than a free and independent man--one who gives and asks reasons; one who demands freedom and gives what he demands; one who refuses to be slave or master. Such a man was Courtlandt Palmer, to whom we pay the tribute of respect and love. He was an honest man--he gave the rights he claimed. This was the foundation on which he built. To think for himself--to give his thought to others; this was to him not only a privilege, not only a right, but a duty. He believed in self-preservation--in personal independence--that is to say, in manhood. He preserved the realm of mind from the invasion of brute force, and protected the children of the brain from the Herod of authority. He investigated for himself the questions, the problems and the mysteries of life. Majorities were nothing to him. No error could be old enough--popular, plausible or profitable enough--to bribe his judgment or to keep his conscience still. He knew that, next to finding truth, the greatest joy is honest search.