Title:  The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics

Author:  Various

Release Date:  December 4, 2005 [EBook #17217]

Language:  English

Character set encoding:  ASCII

*** Start of this project gutenberg EBOOK the Atlantic monthly, volume ***

Produced by Joshua Hutchinson, Josephine Paolucci and the
Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
(This file was produced from images generously made
available by Cornell University Digital Collections)

THE

Atlantic monthly.

A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics.

VOL.  XVIII.—­DECEMBER, 1866.—­NO.  CX.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1866, by Ticknor and fields, in the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts.

[Transcriber’s note:  Minor typos corrected and footnotes moved to end of article.]

* * * * *

John Pierpont.

Most men of “fourscore and upwards,” like Lear, and who, like Lear, have been “mightily abused” in their day, are found, upon diligent inquiry, to have long outlived themselves, like the Archbishop of Granada; but here is a man, or was but the other day, in his eighty-second year, with the temper and edge and “bright blue rippling glitter” of a Damascus blade up to the very last; or rather, considering how he was last employed, with the temper of that strange tool, found among the ruins of Thebes, with which they used to smooth and polish their huge monoliths of granite, until they murmured a song of joy, whenever the morning sunshine fell upon them.

This remarkable man—­remarkable under many aspects—­died at Medford, Massachusetts, on Monday morning, August 27th; and it is now said of heart-disease,—­that other name for a mysterious and sudden death, happen how it may, and when it may.  He had been perfectly well the day before, attended church, and called on some of his neighbors; he retired to rest as usual, and nothing more was heard of him till Monday morning, when he was found asleep in Jesus, prepared, as we humbly trust, to hear the greeting of “Well done, thou good and faithful servant!” Says a friend, in a letter now lying before me, of August 27th:  “On Saturday afternoon, day before yesterday, your friend and my friend, Rev. John Pierpont, called upon me, and we had a very interesting interview of about an hour.  I never saw him look better or appear happier.  Although eighty-one years of age the 6th of last April, he seemed to have the elasticity of youth, and he