Anecdotes of public men; by John W. Forney.

HORACE GREELEY. 397
XCI.
DEATH is busy among the brave and the gifted. William
Prescott Smith, George Gordon Meade, Horace Greeley, have
been called in the prime of life and usefulness. They faded
suddenly from the ranks of men; and nothing remains save the
memory of the exquisite humor and kindness of the one, the
modest courage of the other, the various resources and ceaseless benevolence of the last. But none of the many that have
been summoned will live so long in our hearts, not even William
H. Seward, the venerable sage who led the way full of honors
and of years, as the silver-haired philosopher of the New York
Tribune. The incidents preceding his death, the manner of it,
and the rare events that followed and crowned it, will supply
material fifty years hence for a most touching drama. In one
respect the tributes to his memory must always be unequaled.
I mean the literary laurels laid upon his grave by his associates
of the press. The eulogies upon Washington and Lincoln were
more numerous, perhaps, but they were not so original, and certainly not more sincere. Differing from the worship of Lincoln,
martyr as he was, what was said of Greeley came as warm from
the impulses of his enemies as from the impulses of his friends.
To employ Mr. Sumner's splendid figure: "Parties are always
for the living; and now, standing at the open grave of Horace
Greeley, we are admonished to forget the strife of party, and to
remember only truth, country, and mankind, to which his honest
life was devoted. In other days the horse and armor of the departed chieftain have been buried in the grave where he reposed. So, too, may we bury the animosities if not the badges
of the past. Then, indeed, will there be victory for the dead
which all will share." Every journalist who has written, and
all have written, has, with some unforgotten exceptions, poured
his warmest affections into the sobbing hearts of a sympathizing