He sailed away on the “Lusitania” intending to be gone several weeks.  His Little Journey has been prolonged into Eternity.

But the work of Elbert and Alice Hubbard is not done.  With them one task was scarcely under way when another was launched.  Whether complete or incomplete, there had to be an end to their effort sometime, and this is the end.

Often Elbert Hubbard would tell the story of Tolstoy, who stopped at the fence to question the worker in the field, “My Man, if you knew you were to die tomorrow, what would you do today?” And the worker begrimed with sweat would answer, “I would plow!”

That’s the way Elbert Hubbard lived and died, and yet he did more—­he planned for the future.  He planned the future of the Roycroft Shop.  Death did not meet him as a stranger.  He came as a sometime-expected friend.  Father was not unprepared.

The plan that would have sustained us the seven weeks he was in Europe will sustain us seven years—­and another seven years.

Elbert Hubbard’s work will go on.

I know of no Memorial that would please Elbert Hubbard half so well as to broaden out the Roycroft Idea.

So we will continue to make handmade Furniture, hand-hammered Copper, Modeled Leather.  We shall still triumph in the arts of Printing and Bookmaking.

The Roycroft Inn will continue to swing wide its welcoming door, and the kind greeting is always here for you.

“The Fra” will not miss an issue, and you who have enjoyed it in the past will continue to enjoy it!

“The Philistine” belonged to Elbert Hubbard.  He wrote it himself for just twenty years and one month.  No one else could have done it as he did.  No one else can now do it as he did.

So, for very sentimental reasons—­which overbalance the strong temptation to continue “The Philistine”—­I consider it a duty to pay him the tribute of discontinuing the little Magazine of Protest.

The Roycrofters, Incorporated, is a band of skilled men and women.  For years they have accomplished the work that has invited your admiration.  You may expect much of them now.  The support they have given me, the confidence they have in me, is as a great mass of power and courage pushing me on to success.

This thought I would impress upon you:  It will not be the policy of The Roycrofters to imitate or copy.  This place from now on is what we make it.  The past is past, the future spreads a golden red against the eastern sky.

I have the determination to make a Roycroft Shop—­that Elbert Hubbard, leaning out over the balcony, will look down and say, “Good boy, Bert—­good boy!”

I have Youth and Strength.

I have Courage.

My Head is up.

Forward—­all of us—­March!

ELIZABETH B. BROWNING

I have been in the meadows all the day,
And gathered there the nosegay that you see;
Singing within myself as bird or bee
When such do fieldwork on a morn of May.

                                                  Irreparableness