But Henry Wilson
was an old-fashioned Christian, who had repented of his sins and put his
trust in Christ. By profession he was a Congregationalist; but years ago
he stood up in a Methodist meeting-house and told how he had found the
Lord, and recommending all the people to choose Christ as their
portion--the same Christ about whom he was reading the very night before
he died, in that little book called "The Changed Cross," the more tender
passages marked with his own lead-pencil; and amid these poems of Christ
Henry Wilson had placed the pictures of his departed wife and departed
son, for I suppose he thought as these were with Christ in heaven their
dear faces might as well be next to His name in the book.
It was appropriate that our Vice-president expire in the Capitol
buildings, the scene of so many years of his patriotic work. At the door
of that marbled and pictured Vice-president's room many a man has been
obliged to wait because of the necessities of business, and to wait a
great while before he could get in; but that morning, while the
Vice-president was talking about taking a ride, a sable messenger
arrived at the door, not halting a moment, not even knocking to see if
he might get in, but passed up and smote the lips into silence forever.
The sable messenger moving that morning through the splendid Capitol
stopped not to look at the mosaics, or the fresco, or the panels of
Tennessee and Italian marble, but darted in and darted out in an
instant, and his work was done.
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