New England enlisted in the army, and sang again and again, that old song, “John Brown’s body lies mouldering in the grave, but his soul goes marching on.”  His soul is still marching on.  And while I am one of those who would be the first to resist any attempt to mar the sweet fraternity that now characterises the feeling between the North and South, as I believe that the Southern soldier fought for what he believed to be right, and consequently is entitled to our fraternal respect, and while I believe that John Brown was sometimes a fanatic, yet this illustration teaches us this great lesson and that John Brown’s advice was true.  His happiest days were passed far back in the quiet of his old home.

Near to our home, in the town of Cummington, lived William Cullen Bryant, one of the great poets of New England.  He came back there to spend his summers among the mountains he so clearly loved.  He promised the people of Cummington that he would again make his permanent home there.  I remember asking him if he would come clown to the stream where he wrote “Thanatopsis” and recite it for us.  The good, old neighbor, white haired and trembling, came down to the banks of that little stream and stood in the shade of the same old maple where he had written that beautiful poem, and read from the wonderful creation that made his name famous.

  “So live that when thy summons comes, to join
  The innumerable caravan which moves
  To that mysterious realm where each must take
  His chamber in the silent halls of death,
  Thou go not, like the quarry slave at night,
  Scourged to his dungeon; but, sustained and soothed
  By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave
  Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch
  About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.”

“Yes,” he said, “I will come back to Cummington.”  So he went to Europe but came not back to occupy that home.  He loved the old home.  We were driving by his place one day when we saw him planting apple trees in July.  We all know that apple trees won’t grow when planted in July, so my father, knowing him well, called to him and said, “Mr. Bryant, what are you doing there?  They won’t grow.”  Mr. Bryant paused a moment and looked at us, and then said half playfully:  “Conwell, drive on, you have no part nor lot in this matter.  I do not expect these trees to grow; I am setting them out because I want to live over again the days when my father used to set trees when they would grow.  I want to renew that memory.”  He was wise, for in his work on “The Transmigration of Races” he used that experience wonderfully.