‘ [96] of sound mind, do declare this to be my last will and testament; feeling, to its full extent, the probability that I may not return from the path of duty on which I have entered. If it please God that it be so, I can say, with truth, that I have entered on the course of danger with no ambitious aspirations, nor with the idea that I am fitted, by nature or experience, to be of any important service to the government; but in obedience to the call of duty, demanding every citizen to contribute what he could, in means, labor, or life, to sustain the government of his country,— a sacrifice made the more willingly by me, when I consider how singularly benefited I have been by the institutions of the land, and that, up to this time, all the blessings of life have been showered upon me beyond what usually falls to the lot of man.’ His body, placed in a rude coffin and enveloped in his country's flag, was buried in Oakwood Cemetery at Niagara, near the Episcopal Church which his family had built, and where, by faith and choice, he had long and lovingly worshipped. The solemn dirge of the great cataract, so dear to him in life, sounds forever above his grave. And it seems to those who knew and loved him, that he wrote his own best elegy in the beautiful lines which he composed in Europe, long years before, on hearing of the death of his classmate and friend, George Emerson.
I met our friends upon a foreign shore,
And asked of thee; they told me thou wert dead!
My lips repeat, “He is no more,— no more” ;
'T was all I said.
Yet sank my spirit in me, and there went
A strange confusion o'er my saddened brow,
I could not pierce God's infinite intent;
I cannot now.
I only know that He who in thy birth
Had shadowed forth Himself, though faint and dim,
Decreed how long thou shouldst remain on earth,
How long with Him.
