Let every disheartened
man look at two pictures--Henry Wilson teaching fifteen hours a day at
five dollars a week to get his education, and Henry Wilson under the
admiring gaze of Christendom at the national capital. He was one of the
few men who maintained his integrity against violent temptations. The
tides of political life all set toward dissipation. The congressional
burying-ground at Washington holds the bones of many congressional
drunkards. Henry Wilson seated at a banquet with senators and presidents
and foreign ministers, the nearest he ever came to taking their
expensive brandies and wines was to say, "No, sir, I thank you; I never
indulge." He never drank the health of other people in any thing that
hurt his own. He never was more vehement than in flinging his
thunderbolts of scorn against the decanter and the dram-shop. What a
rebuke it is for men in high and exposed positions in this country who
say, "We can not be in our positions without drinking." If Henry Wilson,
under the gaze of senators and presidents, could say No, certainly you
under the jeers of your commercial associates ought to be able to say
No. Henry Wilson also conquered all temptations to political corruption.
He died comparatively a poor man, when he might have filled his own
pockets and the pockets of his friends if he had only consented to go
into some of the infamous opportunities which tempted our public men.
_Credit Mobilier_, which took down so many senators and representatives,
touched him, but glanced off, leaving him uncontaminated in the opinion
of all fair-minded men.
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