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[285] Be not too proud in your grief, when you remember that there is not a town in the remote State of Kansas that will not weep with you as at the loss of its founder; not a Southern State in which the freedmen will not learn to-day from their preachers that one of their most efficient benefactors has departed, and will cover his memory with benedictions; and that, after all his efforts to serve men without appearing to do so, there is hardly a man in this country worth knowing who does not hold his name in exceptional honor. And there is to my mind somewhat so absolute in the action of a good man, that we do not, in thinking of him, so much as make any question of the future. For the Spirit of the Universe seems to say: “He has done well; is not that saying all?”


This monograph was printed in the Boston Commonwealth, April 20, 1867, and has never been republished. It is exceptional in Emerson's writings as the account of a man with whom he was personally and intimately acquainted.

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