You will be
disappointed in many of your hopes and aspirations. The friends near and
dear to you will turn sometimes coldly from you; the wives of your bosom
and the children of your love will be taken from you; your high hopes
may be blasted; but, gentlemen, when friends turn their backs upon you,
when you lay your dear ones away, when disappointments come to you on
the right hand and on the left, there is one source for a true and brave
heart, and that is an abiding faith in God, and a trust in the Lord
Jesus Christ."
Having concluded his address he sat down, physically exhausted. When we
helped him into his carriage we never expected to see him again. The
telegram from Washington announcing his prostration and certain death
was no surprise. But there and then ended as remarkable a life as was
ever lived in America.
It is no great thing if a man who has been carefully nurtured by
intelligent parents, and then passed through school, college, and those
additional years of professional study, go directly to the front. But
start a man amid every possible disadvantage, and pile in his way all
possible obstacles, and then if he take his position among those whose
path was smooth, he must have the elements of power. Henry Wilson was
great in the mastering and overcoming all disadvantageous circumstances.
He began at the bottom, and without any help fought his own way to the
top. If there ever was a man who had a right at the start to give up his
earthly existence as a failure, that man was Henry Wilson.
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