Extending his hand he said:  “Come in and let me make my best bow to you for the service you have rendered the temperance cause.  I heard you once for about ten minutes in Cooper Union, when I had an engagement and had to leave.  I see you are on the program tomorrow and I shall be there.”

After his first lecture, returning to the hotel I said:  “Mr. Cook, if I can be of any service to you while you are in our city, please feel at liberty to command me at any time.”

He replied:  “I order you at once.  I am anxious to see the home of Henry Clay and the monument erected to his memory.”

Next morning we went to Ashland and then to the cemetery.  After visiting the Clay monument, we were passing near where my daughter had been buried only a few months before.  When I had called his attention to the sacred spot, Mr. Cook said:  “I read Miss Willard’s account of her death, and the beautiful tribute paid her in the Union Signal.  Please stop a moment.”

He left the carriage and going to the grave, took off his hat and stood with uncovered head for a few moments.  Then taking his seat beside me in the carriage, he laid his hand on mine and said:  “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord.”

With tears rolling down my cheeks I said to myself:  “Under the great brain of Joseph Cook beats a tender heart.”  Not to know him was to misjudge him, while the close touch of friendship revealed one of God’s noblemen.

Unity in variety is the order of nature.  Out of what seems to us a medley of contradictions come amendments and reconstructions that illustrate the benevolent guardianship of God in working out the problem of creation.  Out of the most discordant elements God can bring the most harmonious results.  Out of the bitterness and bloodshed of our Civil War has come a more harmonious, united, happy and prosperous people.

It was said of General Grant:  “He’s an artist in human slaughter.  He cares nothing for the loss of men, so he wins the battle.”  But, General Grant believed the harder the battle the sooner it would be over.  When the end came he gave back the sword of Lee, and said to the worn-out Confederate soldiers:  “Take your horses with you, you’ll need them on your farms.  Go back to your homes and peace go with you.”  That manly strength of character that enables a man to face shot and shell on the battlefield, is not any more sublime than the manly weakness of heart which “weeps with those who weep.”

While we should not judge one by a single trait in character we must not overlook the importance of little traits.  In this age of great movements, great schemes and great combinations, our young people are disposed to ignore little things.  A little thing in this great big age is too insignificant.  Yet, we are told it was the cackling of a goose that saved Rome; the cry of a babe in the bull-rushes gave a law-giver to the Jews; the kick of a cow caused the great Chicago